Watchmen: Multiverse
by Sandbat
Summary: Watchmen/Moorcock's Multiverse crossover. Laurie/Silk Spectre II discovers her father's true identity three years too early. Chaos ensues. AU, obviously. NOW UPDATED!
1. She's Not a Girl Who Misses Much

NAME: Watchmen: Multiverse  
AUTHOR: numb3r_5ev3n aka Sandbat aka The Artist Formerly Known as Edward Cullen  
RATING: R  
SYNOPSIS: Watchmen/Moorcock's Multiverse crossover. Laurie/Silk Spectre II discovers her father's true identity three years too early. Chaos ensues. AU, obviously.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story was inspired by a Comedian/Rorschach rapefic that was originally posted to plus4chan's /pco/ board this past August by another contributor. It eventually melded with an idea I'd been kicking around in my brain; what would happen if the fences were knocked down between Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's "Watchmenverse" and the "Multiverse" of Michael Moorcock's fiction? This is the result.

ETA: This tale is now dedicated to Promethea in thanks for the fact that the movie was in fact released and not killed by the Faux Corporation. Thank goddess!

*************

December 10th, 1AM, 1982. Laurie Juspeczyk - otherwise known as the second Silk Spectre - had opted to walk home that night rather than call a cab, still amped from the concert she'd just attended. Jon was back at the Rockefeller Base; still engrossed in his work, no doubt.

Yeah, being on the streets this time of night was dangerous, but so was she - and her crimefighting days really weren't that far behind her. The years - what was it, five years now, since the Keene Act had been passed? - seemed like mere weeks, as if she could count the number of days since she'd made her last legitimate patrol of the city as a costumed superhero.

Sure, her mom had pushed her into it, and Laurie still resented her for that. Still, there were days she could admit to herself that she did kind of miss it, and a part of her still wondered what would have happened if the Keene Act had never made it through Congress...

Her train of thought was abruptly derailed by a moan from a nearby alleyway, one that was almost too low to be heard. Laurie glanced over in the direction of its origin.

_Bet someone was mugged,_ she thought to herself. _They probably need help._

There was a man slumped in the alleyway. For a moment she stood there, disgusted, as her eyes took in what seemed to be yet another homeless wino passed out on the streets of New York. But her gut told her that something here was really _wrong._

"Hey...are you okay?" she asked, taking a step towards the figure, who twitched awake, and then moaned again.

She tensed as the alley-side door to the nearest building opened, going instinctively into a fighting stance as a large, well-muscled figure stepped out into the darkness.

"Well, look who it is," said a voice she remembered all too well behind the leather mask that concealed his features. "Laurel Jane? Thought you'd retired. How's your mom?" The Comedian asked.

Laurie opened her mouth to retort, but her jaw worked soundlessly for a moment - there were no words to express how deeply, how utterly she loathed, hated and despised the man who stood in front of her; his arms crossed, his head cocked at a jaunty, inquisitive angle as if they were old friends who'd run into each other at the supermarket or something. Besides, only her mother got away with calling her Laurel Jane these days. And for him to mention her _mother..._

Her last encounter with the Comedian was still a source of sore, angry embarrassment. She'd made such a fool of herself at the party that night, ranting at the Comedian, throwing her scotch in his face. But now, now she wished she'd gone further, wished she'd just pulled back with her fist and let him have it. Sure, he was still in fighting trim, still presumably doing covert jobs for the US government and could probably defeat her easily - but there were some crimes that demanded nothing less than swift, brutal retribution, with the hope that fate or God the Universe or Whoever would be on the side of the just.

The man at her feet moaned again. There was something _familiar_ about his clothes, and he _smelled_...but his presence gave Laurie the opening she needed for the indignant words that had stuck in her throat. And it was the condition of his clothes, the smell of blood and an odor she also recognized in the darkness that clued her in as to what had really happened here, as a sudden sense of shocked horror surged upward into her chest to join the _rage_ that had simmered there for so long.

"Wow. Didn't know that you were an equal-opportunity rapist," she snarked, bending down to examine the fallen man. He winced and flinched away when she attempted to touch him, to help him up. He brought his arms up over his face, which she hadn't gotten a good look at yet, anyway. Her wrath multiplied itself a thousandfold as she caught sight of everything that had been done to him.

She glanced back up in time to see the Comedian roll his eyes behind his mask, as he bit off an exasperated curse. The he reached up and pulled it off, revealing his hateful, scarred face.

"Don't you ever let up?" The Comedian drawled. "Do you know how many queers this one's beaten up in his time? Should have figured he'd be a closet case himself. His kind usually are."

"Like that makes it okay!" Laurie snarled. "I bet you think mom was asking for it, too!"

"Yeah, while we're on that subject - I meant to tell you about that, before we were interrupted the last time," The Comedian said. "Did your mother ever tell you about your father? Your real father, I mean?" he asked. "You've probably worked out by now that Larry wasn't your real dad."

"What, did you rape him, too?" Laurie shot back angrily.

"No. It's me," the Comedian soberly answered. "I'm your father."

Laurie laughed back in his face, as she tried to ignore horrible, cold feeling that welled up from the pit of her stomach.

(_"Can't a guy talk to his, you know, his old friend's daughter?"_)

"That's not possible! Come on - what is this, _The Empire Strikes Back?_ You honestly think I'm going to buy that?"

(_"Can't a guy talk to his, you know, his-"_)

"I ought to fucking beat you down where you stand, you sick, lying bastard," Laurie stood and said, her voice calm and even despite the berserk fury that was now threatening to explode outward from the center of her very being to visit itself upon the man who seemed to tower over both herself and his recent victim. "You _monster_. You think what Hooded Justice did to you was bad? I'll do even worse," she promised. "Besides, I know that Hooded Justice was my real dad."

"Hooded Justice was as queer as a three dollar bill. Shit, he and Nelly were going at it the whole time. It would take an act of God or a turkey baster to of made either one of them a father. Look. Just call your Mom," The Comedian said coldly. "Make her tell you the truth. For her sake, I'm just going to let you walk away from this. If you were anyone else..."

(_For her sake..._)

(_"Can't a guy talk to his-"_)

The fury within Laurie finally crystallized, then broke. Before the Comedian could react, before he could even register what was about to happen, she lunged, leaped forward, and smashed her fist across the bridge of the Comedian's nose. She had the satisfaction of hearing something snap. She braced herself, preparing to dodge is inevitable return blow; but to her surprise, he pulled back, bringing his hands up to his bloodied nose.

"Well I'll be damned. You might've gotten your mom's looks, but you sure as hell got my right hook." Then he laughed; but there was something there, something in his eyes, that reminded her of the look on his face after her mother had driven her away from Captain Metropolis's failed meeting in 1966, in a rage; the expression that he'd worn at the party, right before she'd tossed her eighth scotch in his face.

("_What kind of man are you, you have to take some woman and force her into having sex against her will-"_)

(_"Only once..."_)

"You must've been waiting to do that for a long time. Be glad it landed...it's gonna be the last time that ever happens," he told her. "You only get one freebie." Then calmly, casually, he turned his back on her and stepped back through the door, closing it behind him.

"YOU GET BACK HERE, YOU BASTARD! I'M GOING TO CRUSH YOUR LYING SKULL!" Laurie roared, throwing a punch that connected solidly with the door in front of her.

(_"Talk to his....to his...you know, his daughter?"_)

"Telling you the truth. It was in his voice," said a voice behind her, seeming to bubble up like bloody froth from the man she was attempting to help, who'd drifted back to consciousness thanks to her earlier attempt to lift him. There was something terribly familiar about that monotone rasp, one that had always sent chills down her spine. She turned, just in time to see him tug something down over his head, over his face...

A mask.

Rorschach.

It was Rorschach.

Her jaw dropped open as he got shakily to his feet - then dropped to one knee as he tried to pull himself up again.

"Oh god," she said.

"Not God that sent you here tonight," the faceless man answered her, making another attempt to get to his feet. It was Rorschach...Rorschach, whom she'd always disliked, whose methods she detested...

_It doesn't matter. Some things shouldn't happen to anyone._

"You need to go to the hospital," Laurie told him, reaching to help him up again. He jerked away from her with a shudder that seemed born of pure revulsion.

"No, no, no, no...don't touch..." he hissed, lurching a few feet down the away from her before finally making it to his feet. "No pain. Will manage without help."

"Are you crazy? You need medical attention! You need to fucking report this!" Laurie protested.

"Report? To whom? The police? I'm not exactly their favorite person." Clinging to the brick wall on the opposite side of the alleyway for support, Rorschach turned to regard her. "No. Won't say anything. Shameful. Sick. Implications very bad..."

_Oh god, he's blaming himself. It's mom all over again._

"To hell with that! The whole _country_ needs to know what he is, what he does, what he's been doing for years..."

"Been serving his country for years. And he's your father."

"He was lying, he has to have been lying. It's all just a _joke_ to him..."

"Wasn't lying. Your mother knows," Rorschach told her.

"Well so what? So what if it is the truth! Whatever happened to never compromising, no matter what? I sure as hell wouldn't stay quiet if he...if he..."

Rorschach turned away as she trailed off. For a moment, it seemed as though he was lost in thought. Then he slumped back against the wall.

"Oh god," she said again, and tentatively reached out. His whole body went rigid as she got a shoulder under his left armpit, supporting him, as if he couldn't abide her touch.

"Come on, you can barely walk, we have to get out of here..."

"Daniel," Rorschach said, as his knees buckled. "Will go see Dreiberg. Not hospital. Nowhere else."

"Whatever," she said, making her way out of the alley as best she could with the wounded Rorschach in tow.

*************

"Laurie? It's been awhile...is something wrong?" Daniel Dreiberg asked, answering the door after her second round of knocking. From what she could see of him, it appeared he'd woken from a deep sleep. His glasses and hair were askew, and his bathrobe was tied loosely around his pajama-clad form. He opened the door wider to let her in, and gasped in horror when he saw Rorschach, still half-supported by Laurie.

"Crap...get him in here, quick! What the hell happened?" he exclaimed.

"Don't-" Rorschach began, as Laurie blurted over him -

"The Comedian raped him is what happened. He's really messed up, he's probably bleeding internally, and he refuses to go to a hospital."

"Raped?"

"No..." Rorschach groaned.

"Yes! And threw him out into the alley when he was done!"

Laurie had never witnessed such a sudden, shocking transformation in her entire life - the pudgy, mild-mannered, sleepy ex-masked hero once known as the second Nite Owl suddenly wore an expression of such cold, murderous fury that Laurie would have backed up a step, if Rorschach hadn't been in the way.

"Help me get him down the stairs. I have a fully-stocked medical bay set up in the basement. I haven't used it for years, but everything should still be in working order."

They made their way down the stairs as best they could, supporting Rorschach between them. Any other time, Laurie would have been awe-stricken by the complexity of the Nite Owl's lair, and the variety and brilliance of the equipment he'd devised in his campaign against crime. Now, she simply helped Dan walk Rorschach across his underground sanctum and lay Rorschach down on a cot.

"I had some EMT training while I was at Harvard. You wouldn't believe how many times it saved our lives. We had to patch each other up quite a bit, back in those days," Daniel explained to Laurie.

"I remember," Rorschach rasped, as Daniel took his vital signs.

"You're going to be okay, buddy. Everything's going to be okay," Daniel said, sounding as though he was trying to reassure himself as much as Rorschach. Laurie assisted him as best she could. "I was with the Comedian, during the riots in '77. I saw him do things...I knew he was capable of some pretty awful things, but this..."

"This goes beyond the pale," Laurie grimly finished for him.

"You have no idea," Daniel confirmed, his gaze meeting hers over Rorschach's prone body. His eyes were as hard as steel.

Before long they had him stabilized, and on painkillers. They let the wounded vigilante rest. Daniel had pulled his mask up just over the bridge of his nose to ease his breathing, revealing the lower half of the face that Laurie had almost caught a glimpse of earlier in the alley.

"Laurie, I want to thank you for helping him, for bringing him here tonight. I know you two have never exactly been friends..."

"It's okay," Laurie said. It was true, she'd never liked Rorschach...but seeing the way he and Dan related, the obvious bond of friendship between them, made her more glad she'd done it than anything else. Maybe Rorschach was a paranoid psychopath, but he was still a human being.

The Comedian, on the other hand...

"Listen, can I use your phone? I really need to call my mom. I'll do it collect..."

"Of course. We'll be down here."

*************

"Laurie, it's late. What possessed you to call at this hour?" The voice of Sally Jupiter reached her daughter's ears over the distance of an entire continent. She and Laurie had their differences, of course, but Laurie wondered if the distance between them emotionally was about to grow as wide.

"I saw the Comedian today. He told me he was my father," Laurie said. On the other end of the line, there was dead silence.

"Well? Is it true? Mother..."

More silence, and then -

"Oh Laurel honey, you just have to understand how it is. I never meant for you to find out like this. He came over one day, and well, I just couldn't stay mad at him. He -"

Laurie numbly hung up the phone as her reality utterly, finally collapsed around her. She was unable and unwilling to hear any more.

"Is everything okay?" Dan asked, when she made her way back down the stairs.

_Telling the truth_ Rorschach's voice echoed in her mind. _Your mother knows._

"No, it isn't." Laurie answered him quietly, her voice a dull monotone. "The Comedian is my father."


	2. They Cut The Bloodline In the Center

"The Comedian? Your father?" Daniel asked, the light from the bulb overhead reflecting off of the lenses of his glasses. By his expression, it almost looked as if he thought she might be joking. "Are you sure?"

"That's what he told me when I found Rorschach. That's why I called mom. She seems pretty convinced," Laurie answered in the same low, flat tone of voice. She'd figured that if she just told Dan like it was something that had happened to somebody else - something that she'd heard about secondhand, or on the news - she could act like the words didn't make her feel as though her whole world had just been ripped into shreds. There was a lump in her throat, and tears were on their way. She willed them both to stay down.

"But I thought...Laurie, what happened? How did you find him? Oh hell...I'm going to go make us some coffee. I doubt either one of us is getting any sleep tonight."

They went upstairs, and coffee was made in short order. She sat there numbly at first, with Daniel staring at her over the steaming mugs across his kitchen table. The feelings of rage and shock and betrayal felt like a solid, tangled knot in her chest, one that it would be impossible to get any words around. After a few minutes, she finally began;

"I don't know how it happened. I was coming back from the Count Zodiac show over at CBGB's, and I just found Rorschach in an alleyway. Then the Comedian came out of the nearest doorway and...oh Christ, he must've done it to him there. It looked like some kind of abandoned warehouse. He told me he was my father, with Rorschach just lying there on the ground. Like it was supposed to excuse what he'd done, like it made it all okay," she said with a tremor in her voice.

"Rorschach and I were partners," Dan told her. "We used to watch each other's backs. If I'd been there, if I'd been with him...if I hadn't retired...if he hadn't been out there alone..."

"Maybe none of us should've quit – Keene Act or no Keene Act," Laurie said quietly.

"I don't understand...even with all of the sick things the Comedian's done in the past, how could he do _this?"_ he exclaimed. "Rorschach admired him...even idolized him a little, I think. What could have possibly possessed him to do something like this?"

Laurie remembered what the Comedian had said about Rorschach being a "closet case," but felt it was insignificant in the face of what had been done to him.

_Well hell, he's the one who went and raped another man. What does that make him?_ she wondered bitterly.

Their eyes met again across the table, mirroring each other's resolve as they simultaneously reached the very same conclusion, saw each other come to the very same decision.

"You wanna go ask him?" Laurie suggested.

"Yeah, I think we should," Dan answered. "I can have my airship prepped in less than an hour. Do you want to go get your costume?"

"Sounds like a plan."

*************

Panic seized Rorschach for one horrible moment as he clawed his way back to consciousness through a drugged haze.

_(A cot. He's on a cot, and there are medical instruments lying on a table nearby. Where is he? A basement? )_

_(Daniel's basement? How? Why?)_

_(Then, he remembers. It all comes back to him in a rush -)_

_(The Comedian, leering over him. Pain -)_

_(The Silk Spectre, leaning over him. All he wants to do is drag himself away. He doesn't want her to see -)_

_(She's going to touch him -)_

"_NO!"_

Rorschach flailed, knocking over the low table next to his cot. Shakily, he willed himself to sit up, to lower his feet to the concrete floor of the basement. With a hiss of pain, he lurched over to the chair and pulled on what remained of his clothes, followed by his scarf, his hat, and his coat.

"Rorschach? What are you doing? My god, what are you doing up?"

The Nite Owl was addressing him from Archie's open hatch, an expression of profound concern on what Rorschach could see of his face.

"Laurie's gone to get her costume," the Nite Owl said. "I'm just getting Archie prepped and ready to go. Then we're going to go find the Comedian."

"No need for you to get involved," Rorschach told him. "Though it is nice to see you back in uniform. I'll deal with this."

"Are you kidding? You've been through enough tonight! You should be resting. Laurie and I -"

Whatever Nite Owl might have said next was lost in the growl that erupted from Rorschach's throat.

"I've _never_ rested! Not even after all of you quit," he exclaimed, almost shouting. "Cannot let this slur on my reputation stand. Will not lie here in your basement while word of tonight's activities gets around," He swayed, grabbing the edge of the chair-back for support to steady himself.

"All right, pal. All right..." Daniel said, reaching out to help him, stopping just shy of touching him. It was obvious to Dan that Rorschach was trying to shore himself up; but beneath the tough facade, he could feel his old friend unraveling.

"What happened?" Dan asked Rorschach finally. "Did he ambush you somehow? I mean -"

"You heard Miss Jupiter. Nothing more to be said," Rorschach answered. "We are wasting time here, Daniel."

Dan could practically sense the force of will that Rorschach was exerting just to stay upright, to keep functioning; he was wound as tightly as a piano wire. Any further pressure, and he would snap completely.

Still, as much as it probably would have helped, Dan rather doubted that Rorschach would permit himself to be passively wrapped in a blanket and fed soup for the next few days while he and Laurie hunted down the Comedian.

"Just give her a little bit longer. Then we'll all go together," Dan assured him.

**************

It was nearly 4:00 in the AM by the time Laurie made it back to the Rockefeller Military Research Center. Jon was still going strong in the lab, just as Laurie had expected. She made a beeline for their living quarters first, as she really wasn't in the mood to try and explain anything to him.

_He'd probably just try and stop me,_ she reasoned – though she knew he was just as likely to stare at her apathetically for a moment before going back to whatever he was currently working on.

_I should tell him,_ she thought darkly. _I should just go up and say, "Yeah, the Comedian is my father. Incidentally, would you do us all a favor and vaporize him? I mean, I'm sure he doesn't amount to much in the grand, cosmic scheme of things. Just...POOF, gone! That would be great._

Alone in the suite of rooms she shared with Jon, Laurie opened the drawer containing her old costume for the first time in five years. But as she gazed down upon the yellow and black mesh and spandex, she felt nothing but bitter anger and betrayal. This costume and the identity that with with it had been her mother's legacy – her mother, who'd apparently slept with the monster who'd attempted to rape her all those years ago, who'd half-strangled her and broken her ribs. The same monster who'd brutalized Rorschach, and dumped him in an alley.

It was then that Laurie decided that if she was going back into the costumed adventurer business, she would forge an identity that was entirely her own.

*************

"You're back late. How was the concert?" Jon asked Laurie, not even glancing up from the project he was working on as she walked into the lab. "By the way, your mother called. She sounded very upset."

"That's nice. The Comedian is my father," Laurie said flatly, coming up behind him.

"What?" Jon exclaimed, turning to face her.

"The Comedian is my father," she repeated. "I ran into him tonight. He told me."

"This can't be," Jon said with a shocked expression.

"Oh Jon, I was so afraid you wouldn't understand," Laurie said, relief flooding her voice. "I mean, all these years, Mother never said anything - "

"Laurie, we can't be having this conversation now," Jon said, agitated. "Three years from now we're talking on Mars, and you're realizing the Comedian is your father. We're there _now._"

"...Mars? Wait, what...you mean you knew the Comedian is my father? YOU KNEW ALL THIS TIME?"

"No Laurie, if you'd just listen...three years from now, we're on Mars, and you're trying to convince me to return to earth to forestall the escalating conflict between nations that my absence has precipitated. You're also telling my about your affair with Dreiberg -"

"WHAT? I haven't slept with Dan!" Laurie protested.

"No, but you will. For me, it's already happening," Jon told her. "Or at least, it's supposed to. But how can you be here, telling me now, when you're only just figuring it out there?"

"Look, Jon! I don't know the future, but I can tell you what happened tonight. I ran into the Comedian after I found Rorschach in an alley, after the Comedian dumped him there and left him for dead. He told me he was my father. I called mother, she didn't deny it -"

"No, this is all wrong," Jon said. "Everything that you claim has happened, everything you've said and done since you got back is a deviation from the overall structure of time as I've experienced it!"

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you don't actually know everything?" Laurie retorted, suddenly realizing that she had never seen Jon look so freaked out by anything before in all the time she'd known him. He almost looked as though he were scared of _her._

"Laurie, don't you understand? Something is wrong with time!" Jon exclaimed. "Tell me...which concert did you say you'd attended tonight?"

"Count Zodiac. At CBGB's" Laurie answered. "I don't see what that has to do with anything -" She trailed off. The expression on Jon's face stopped her cold.

"Count Zodiac." Jon repeated, as if that explained everything.

"Sure. Albino violinist. Sometimes plays with a band, has a magic act, to boot - Jon, what does he have to do with any of this?"

"Possibly everything," Jon said, right before he disappeared.

"DAMN IT, JON!" Laurie shouted as he teleported away.

"I'm going back to Dan's!" she shouted after him, into the empty air where he had been standing seconds before. "And by the way, I'm not sleeping with him!"

Silence.

With an angry snort, she turned and left.


	3. She's Dressed In Black Again

Half an hour later, Laurie was back at Dan's. This time he answered the door the first time she knocked, cracking it open to let her slip through. She saw why, once she was in; like her, he was in costume for the first time in five years.

"The ship's ready," Dan said. "We can leave anytime. Did everything go okay?" He asked her, glancing questioningly at her trenchcoat-clad form.

"I guess," she answered, quietly debating with herself for a moment whether to tell Dan about Jon's freakout and abrupt departure. She decided it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was finding the Comedian, and making him _pay._ If Jon wasn't there when she got back - whenever that was - well, she'd just have to deal with that then.

She removed her coat as they proceeded down the basement stairs, and a familiar rasping monotone greeted her;

"New uniform, Miss Jupiter?"

Rorschach was at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for them.

Dan turned to see what Rorschach was referring to, and got his first look at Laurie's "new uniform." After a moment's consideration back at the base, she'd settled on a long-sleeved black spandex unitard that she wore to work out in when it was chilly, along with black stiletto heels and black elbow-length kidskin gloves. If she ruined them during the course of the rest of the night's activities, she'd consider it a small sacrifice indeed.

She'd kept the skull choker from her original costume, though. She kind of liked it.

"It's uhh, very black," Dan remarked.

"Good choice. More practical. More _concealing,_" Rorschach said, stressing the last word in particular.

"It's _Juspeczyk,_ by the way; 'Jupiter' was what my mother called herself because she didn't want anyone to know she was Polish." The last thing she wanted right now was to be linked in name to her traitor of a mother, who'd gone and slept with her rapist of a father. "And who asked you, anyway? Jeez, how are you even moving? Dan, don't tell me he's coming with us, he was half dead only an hour or so ago!"

"I won't slow you down, Miss Juspeczyk," Rorschach retorted.

"The hell you won't! The state you're in, we'll be carting you back in a wooden box before the night's over - that is, unless you'd prefer to be cremated instead."

"This shouldn't take long. I know where the Comedian engages in his recreational activities," Rorschach said, moving towards the Owlship. "Formidable combatant, despite his age. He already overpowered me once this evening. Who knows? Perhaps you'll get your wish, Miss Juspeczyk."

"Forget combing the city for him. My mother told me his name some time ago. His real name's Edward Blake."

"Really? That should speed things up a bit," said Dan, who lost no time looking up the name on his computer. Within minutes, they had an address.

Rorschach's steps up the ladder through the Owlship's hatchway were slow, deliberate: had it not been for the painkillers they'd given him earlier, Laurie guessed that he probably wouldn't be moving at all. He had the air of a condemned man she'd seen in one of the late-night black-and-white movies that she occasionally caught on TV; the vibe of someone for who knew they marched towards death, and didn't care. Someone who hoped to go down fighting.

She sincerely hoped they got a chance to take her father out before it came to that.

She wanted to be the one to do it, Rorschach's death-wish be damned.

*************

Dr. Manhattan knew exactly where he'd find Count Zodiac. The musician had taken a fairly modest hotel room uptown. He was still awake, and was even practicing his violin when Jon arrived.

It appeared he was expected.

"Dr. Manhattan, I presume," the albino said without the slightest hint of surprise at the intrusion, as he casually set aside the bow of his instrument. He was still clad in the elegant black suit and tailcoat he'd worn at his performance earlier; his tophat sat on the nearby table. His crimson eyes regarded Jon behind the lenses of his dark glasses.

"Count Zodiac. Also known in some circles as Monsieur Zenith," Jon began. "I trust you're going to tell me what your game is."

"The game of time, of course," Zodiac said, standing with a flourish. "I'd wondered if you knew what the situation would be before you arrived."

"Actually, it's hard to see it clearly from here," Jon admitted. "There's some sort of static interference. Perhaps the result of a massive nuclear detonation - "

"Or tachyons, broadcast from eight stations in Antarctica, assisted by eight satellites in orbit around the Earth," Zodiac finished for him.

"Broadcast from – Adrian Veidt's Antarctic sanctum!" Jon exclaimed, as the truth of the matter suddenly struck him.

"Exactly. In the end, it all comes back to Veidt. When his original plot failed and the nations of the Earth united against him, he made another desperate gamble."

"Veidt's discovered a way to travel through time," Jon hypothesized. Zodiac confirmed this with a nod.

"The failure of Adrian Veidt's original scheme came about due to the existence of a certain journal which was published by the New Frontiersman after the untimely death of its author," Zodiac explained, with a significant glance at Jon. "Once Veidt discovered this, he attempted to go back in time and account for the journal and the author in his plans – and was foiled yet again. He's made multiple trips at this point. Frankly I'd expected him to be ejected from the timestream long before now."

"The Morphail Effect?" Jon asked. Two weeks from the time the conversation that he and Zodiac were now having, a woman named Una Persson was explaining it to him. Anyone who attempted any major changes within their own timeline would trigger the Morphail Effect, catapulting them back to their starting point, or even to the ultimate end (and beginning) of time.

Usually, anyway. It seemed that Count Zodiac himself was an exception to the rule. Was Adrian Veidt, as well?

"Indeed. It seems he's found a way around that as well, at least for the moment," Count Zodiac said grimly. There will be a major rupture somewhere within this sphere, and very soon, unless he's stopped. We'd hoped Adrian would realize the error of his ways - but if anything, his recent failures have only caused him to become more desperate. I was wondering if you'd care to assist me in driving the matter home?"

"If the crisis you describe is to be averted, then it appears I have little choice," Jon conceded.

"I thought you might see it that way," Count Zodiac said, replaced his violin in its case, and drawing a longer instrument case from under the nearby bed.

In that case, Jon sensed Death. Black, inexorable, inevitable death – the eventual heat-death of the universe personified in over five feet of light-eating, _life_-consuming black metal. A death that could even threaten _him._

"Will that truly be necessary?" Jon asked, almost sputtering over his words.

"One can never be too careful," Count Zodiac sardonically replied.

*************

They made one stop before heading for the penthouse of one Edward Blake - the warehouse where the act had occurred.

The Comedian was long gone. Rorschach took one look in the place before turning back away into the alley, unwilling to even cross the threshold. Laurie felt badly for him even over the tightly-wound, reverberating hum of fury that had sustained her over the course of the entire night. The place consisted of a single dark room, inhabited only by a surgical table with restraints.

It looked as though the place had been scrubbed down, though that didn't stop Laurie and Dan from searching for clues anyway. They went over the scene with the precision of professional crime scene investigators, but were hampered by the fact their quarry really hadn't left them much evidence to collect. In twenty years of black ops work for Uncle Sam, it appeared that the Comedian had learned just about everything there was to know about covering his tracks.

"Wasting time here. He's gone," Rorschach said, finally stepping through the doorway.

"It doesn't seem like he's left us very much in the way of evidence. Shame. I'd love to see what would happen if he actually went to jail for this."

"People like him don't go to jail," Laurie said. "I bet they'd just give a slap on the wrist and a Presidential pardon along with new marching orders, and probably even a medal for assaulting Rorschach. Jon's worked for the government for years, remember. I know how this administration operates." She glanced over in time to see Rorschach twitch slightly in reaction to her words.

Laurie took one last look around as they left. She wondered who actually owned the place, or if her father had ever used it for anyone else besides Rorschach.

Sickened by the thought, she closed the door behind her and headed back into the alley.

The Owlship made reaching Edward Blake's penthouse a cinch. Laurie had known his true identity for years - but if Nite Owl and Rorschach had harbored any doubts, they disappeared the moment they entered through a huge plate glass window. Dan's glass cutter was put to good use.

The first thing Laurie registered upon breaking into her father's home was the racy pinup of her mother on the opposite wall.

("_Oh Laurel honey, you have to understand, I just couldn't stay mad -"_)

"Oh my _god,_" she exclaimed in horror - wincing as she suddenly realized that if they'd been depending on the element of surprise, she'd just effectively blown it. However, it seemed that the Comedian's domicile was just as empty as the room in the abandoned warehouse they'd just left.

"Think we should check the bedroom?" Dan asked.

"No point. Not here," Rorschach said, climbing into the room behind them.

"Do we wait up?" Dan asked. "I could move Archie to a more concealable spot, if we're planning on setting up an ambush."

"Sounds good," Laurie responded. "The bastard has to come back eventually." Dan nodded and climbed back out through the window.

A look around the place revealed it to be a richly-appointed, if somewhat tacky bachelor pad. It was morbidly surreal being there, knowing he could walk in the door any minute. _Her father._ She wondered if he'd still be wearing his armored costume when he came in. That, and his mask.

She wondered what it would be like to kill him, being able to see his face. That was the question. They were going to ambush the Comedian - and then what? Sure, she'd taken down her fair share of villains in the crimefighting business, and she'd been consumed with rage ever since she'd encountered the Comedian in the alleyway after seeing what he'd done; but she'd never taken a life. Not like Rorschach, who'd appointed himself the judge, jury, and executioner of New York's streets.

She wanted to pound the Comedian's face in, no doubt; to make him pay for what he'd done, all of it - to her mother, and likely to countless other women as well - and to the masked lunatic to whom she was now allied. But what then?

Rorschach was taking the opportunity to poke around. Laurie saw him open a nearby closet - and pause.

"Hurm," he mused, reaching inside.

"What?" Laurie asked, turning. Rorschach was doing something with a coat hanger that he'd unwound, and bent into a straight, notched rod.

"Closet larger inside than outside," Rorschach informed her.

"I don't think I really want to know what's in the Comedian's closet," Laurie retorted, fists clenched so tightly that if she hadn't been wearing gloves, her fingernails would've been cutting her palms. "I mean, look at this place. Who has posters of their potential rape victims up on their walls, for crissakes? It's just sick! And why..._how _could she have gone back to him? I just don't understand it."

Her eyes settled on a photograph of the Comedian-as-Edward-Blake shaking hands with Vice President Ford, and she almost felt like screaming. She'd tossed her drink at him only about an hour after that picture was taken. And why not? He'd hurt her mother - and yet, there he was, laughing and chomping his cigar with Nixon and Ford's cronies like his brutal antics were something to be proud of. Jon had been angry - angry at _her_. She'd almost felt like a misbehaving child when he'd teleported her away, she'd been so embarrassed...

"Secret chamber," Rorschach said, stepping further into the closet. Laurie heard the clicking sound of a panel sliding back into the wall.

Dan was making his way back through the window just in time to see what Rorschach found; various pieces of the Comedian's gear, with conspicuous spaces where his costume and mask most likely would have been. And more – pictures and newspaper cutouts detailing the Comedian's long, checkered history amongst the masked hero community. There he was in 1940, with the Minutemen, kneeling just to the right of her mother.

Then Laurie's gaze shifted to the photograph next to it, and her heart nearly stopped.

It was a picture of her, with Jon. But here? Why?

She could feel Dan and Rorschach's eyes on her as she struggled to breathe around the lump in her throat.

"What is that doing here?" she asked.

"Laurie?" Dan asked. His hand was raised, inches from her arm, as if he'd reached out to comfort her and awkwardly stopped short.

Rorschach simply stared at the photo for one long moment, and then back at her.

Tears were filling her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to choke them back. Again, the question - _why_?

Her life was already one elaborate joke, it seemed; a conspiracy set in motion by her parents, carefully safeguarded by a web of assumptions and lies. Now Laurie found herself wondering what would have happened if he'd just been decent, if he'd been _there,_ if she'd had a real father growing up like other kids had.

_He has my picture. More than I ever had from him. _

"It's okay,"she said bitterly, wiping a tear away. "I'm _glad_ he wasn't around when I was a kid! I _hate_ him! I hate them both!" Like her tears, the words were spilling out before she could stop them.

"Mother of dubious moral standing," Rorschach said, studying the numerous pictures and newspaper clippings in the secret compartment. His voice sounded strained; were the drugs starting to wear off? "Father working for the government. American hero."

_"Hero?"_ Laurie protested. "How can say that, after what he did to you? How can you stand there and excuse what he's done -"

"Not my intention," Rorschach answered slowly, his normal monotone inflected by something dark and leaden.

"Then what are you getting at?" Laurie demanded.

"Nothing. Medicine doing the talking. Don't like narcotic painkillers. Legalized form of heroin," Rorschach said. The shifting inkblots provided no clue to what was going on behind the mask; even so, he turned his face away.

Laurie thought he looked sad.


	4. The Father Who Must Be Killed

The Comedian got back just before sunrise. Alarm bells went off in his head as he approached his building. Everything looked normal, but something in the air felt distinctly _off._

_If I were my daughter, and I was still that pissed off, where would I be right now? Let's see...three guesses, and the first two don't count._

He'd survived as long as he had by paying very close attention to his intuition; and he'd been in the assassination business long enough to know that the best way to avoid being snuffed on one's own turf was to get to know that turf like the back of one's own hand. He went up the fire escape instead of going up the elevator and through the front door, and was through the roof access hatch in minutes.

There it was, the goddamn Owlship. The Comedian couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"So you went and dragged poor Nite Owl out of retirement," he remarked aloud, around his cigar. "Probably didn't take very long. Boy's been carrying a torch for you for decades."

His daughter's hatred stung; but if she was willing to play this kind of game, he was all for it. It was better than nothing at all.

Besides, no child of the waterfront - and that was what she was, even if she didn't want to admit it - ever got away with sassing their old man the way she had without paying for it sooner or later. Another lesson he'd have to teach her before the fun was all over and done with.

Reaching into his leather-and-Kevlar chestpiece, he pulled out one of his more formidable weapons; a pen and a small pad of paper.

*************

Five hours had passed, and the Comedian still wasn't back yet. It was well after dawn.

They'd resealed the Comedian's secret hidey-hole in the back of the closet, and crouched down in the darkened apartment to wait. For a moment after they'd found her picture, Laurie thought that Dan looked like he might hug her or something. That would have been okay; she realized that she actually wanted him to.

Instead, they'd sat waiting in silence, except for the time Rorschach got up and made his way somewhat shakily over to the fridge.

After all that had happened, she figured he could be excused for raiding the Comedian's refrigerator. It was only when she saw him pulling the shelves out with the food that she realized what he had in mind.

"You can't be serious," she said, as he awkwardly climbed into the refrigerator.

"Better hiding place," he informed her. She almost smiled.

Dan merely looked worried; Laurie wondered if he thought that Rorschach might be losing his mind -

_Losing his mind? Oh wait. This is Rorschach. Been there, done that, bought the blood-stained T-shirt._

"Like he isn't going to see that stuff out on the counter," Laurie remarked.

"Good plan. Should work," Rorschach insisted stubbornly. The corner of her mouth twitched; Laurie couldn't help herself. But her slight smile faded as something suddenly occurred to her:

_What if he has been back? What if we've already given ourselves away somehow?_

"Dan, where did you leave the ship?" she asked.

"On the roof. It's not visible from the street, I checked -"

"It may not need to be. I'm going to go check something out."

"I'll go with you," Dan said.

"I'll be here," Rorschach's voice echoed from the fridge.

A few minutes later, they were up on the roof. Sure enough, the ship was still there where Dan had left it – along with a small piece of paper that was duct-taped to the hatchway handle. They both stared at it for almost a full minute before Laurie slowly extended a hand and ripped it from the handle.

It read;

"DEAR PUMPKIN.

YOU KNOW ALL THOSE YEARS I HAVEN'T BEEN IN YOUR LIFE? WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE I'M GOING TO HAVE TO BE ABSENT FOR A LITTLE WHILE LONGER. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME, KIDDO.

LOVE,

YOUR DAD.

PS. IF NITE OWL IS STANDING NEXT TO YOU, I WANT YOU TO REACH OVER AND SMACK HIM UPSIDE THE HEAD FOR ME. HOW ABOUT FINDING A LESS CONSPICUOUS PLACE TO PUT THE OWLSHIP NEXT TIME?"

*************

Rorschach heard her screaming all the way back down in the refrigerator. She was still screaming by the time he got up to the roof. Dan had her by the wrists. From the other sounds he'd been hearing as he'd come up the stairs to the roof, he wondered if she'd been pounding the side of the airship in her rage and frustration.

Sobbing, she collapsed into Dan's arms.

"It's going to be all right. We'll find him. I promise you we'll find him," Dan was saying, over and over again like a mantra.

Rorschach turned away, to gaze out over the sprawling cityscape. His face turned over to the direction of New York's harbor.

Tonight, they'd start hitting waterfront bars. Somewhere in this corrupted, bloated city, a Comedian was hiding. Someone knew where he was. It was only a matter of time before they found out where.

*************

_In the end, it's all a joke._

Among other things, the Comedian had become notorious over the years for his ability to reduce things down to their absolute fundamentals with his accustomed brutal bluntness. The fact that he liked to do the same thing with people was all just a part of the gag. To leave them with their illusions shredded, their preconceptions torn to bits.

Like Rorschach, for example. The Comedian felt that it should have been obvious to anyone that his creepy mask, extreme philosophy, and badass demeanor all merely posed as a front for a badly closeted little misanthropic freak. One who'd probably been picked on as a child, and who'd been unable to deal with the horrors he'd found himself exposed to as a crimefighter; effectively cocooning his true, weak self inside the terror that was Rorschach.

The Comedian had enjoyed stripping the layers of that cocoon away, watching the feared vigilante's attempts to retreat behind the walls as he continued to rip each one of them down.

(_And if he could drag someone else into his own private Hell, even for one night – well, what wouldn't misery give for a little company every now and then?_)

Then his daughter had gotten involved, and things had gotten complicated - an unpleasant reminder that such brutal honesty could cut both ways. The moment he'd finished with Rorschach, he'd gotten the full force of Laurie's fury and loathing shoved straight down his throat. The daughter who hated him, whom he'd never gotten to know, born of the woman whom he would never be with because of a stupid mistake made over forty years ago. In the space of a single moment, he'd managed to reaffirm everything she despised about him.

Well, again, that mistake could cut both ways. It was obvious she had daddy issues out the wazoo; and as usual, he'd known just what to say to knock her off her goddamned moral high horse.

(_...Shit._)

(_........Shit._)

Besides, if there'd been anything he could've said to light a fire under her to come find him, it was that. The game was afoot. It would be interesting to see how well she played, and who would be left standing once it was all over with. And if she showed him up for everything that he was – well, he knew he could handle it.

_After all, the best joke is always the simplest statement of the truth._

*************

By the time they regrouped back in Dan's basement, the drugs had completely worn off. Rorshach could barely walk, though he was trying very hard to conceal that fact.

Though physically unscathed, Laurie seemed almost as bad.

There was nothing Dan wanted more than to resume the search for the Comedian, but frankly he doubted that his comrades were up to it - either physically or emotionally. Yet he was certain he knew what their responses would be if he attempted to leave either one of them behind.

Laurie hadn't spoken a single word since accepting the coffee from him, sitting slumped against one curving wall of the ship and staring blankly ahead. She'd refused to go back into the Comedian's penthouse once they'd found the note.

Rorschach had taken a seat almost directly opposite from hers.

There had been a moment during the flight back to his lair that Dan thought he could actually feel the two of them _communing_ their mutual need to find the man who'd left them in this condition, and to extract vengeance for their suffering.

A tiny part of Dan worried about what would happen when they _did_ manage to track the Comedian down. Not that he wanted the Comedian to be spared any of what was coming to him; not at all. He did pity anyone or anything that might potentially come between themselves and the man they hunted; and wondered if he'd have to take care of damage control as well when the moment of reckoning finally came.

*************

Laurie snapped out of her trance the moment Rorschach stumbled on Archie's makeshift stepladder in front of her, as they were coming back out into the basement.

"I told you so!" she proclaimed defiantly, grabbing his arm. Dan rushed back and caught him from the front.

"Not dead yet," Rorschach said. "Daniel, why are we here? Comedian still at large."

"You need to rest. We could all do with some rest, actually," he said, darting a careful glance at Laurie. She actually looked gray at this point, and he remembered that it had probably been several hours – the previous day, in fact - since she'd even eaten, save for one of the granola bars he'd kept onboard for long missions that he'd stored there since the mid -1970s - and probably tasted like it, too.

They helped Rorschach back over to the cot where they'd treated him the night before last.

"No more painkillers, Daniel," Rorschach told him, after he handed Rorschach two pills and a glass of water from the kitchen upstairs.

"This is Tylenol. Don't worry, I promise not to dope you up this time."

Rorschach stared at the two pills as if he strongly suspected them of harboring communist sympathies, before finally swallowing them with most of the water.

He was asleep almost before his masked head hit the pillow.

Daniel glanced up to where Laurie was standing in the doorway up to the kitchen. Illuminated as she was by the light behind her with her face in darkness, she almost resembled her namesake – a spectre.

"How are you holding up?" Dan asked softly. "Do you want anything? I could make you breakfast."

"Breakfast? It's almost midnight," she said. "Shit...I probably have to get back. Dan...Jon and I had a fight before I left. He teleported off in a huff - he seemed really freaked out. I need to see if he's gotten back yet."

"Are you sure?" He asked, mounting the stairs and following her into the kitchen. "I mean...we've all been through the mill today. I could put you up for the night. You could call Jon from here."

"I don't know if that would really be a good idea," Laurie said, sounding to Dan as if there was something she was trying to decide whether or not to mention to him. "When are you planning on setting out again?" she asked, after a moment's consideration.

"Well, uh, tomorrow night , actually. I need to check some things on the ship. I kind of warmed it up in a hurry," Dan said. "And Rorschach...well, frankly I don't like the idea of him exerting himself this much, this soon, after what the Comedian did to him. I guess we'll see."

"Yeah. Take care, okay? I'll try to be back here by the time it gets dark." Laurie said.

"Laurie...look, are you okay, really?" Dan asked her, as he followed her out of the front door.

Her expression told him everything he feared.

"No. But hey, things are tough all over," she answered, reaching into her coat pocket for her cigarettes. "Thank you, Dan. I mean it. For everything." She flashed him a pained, exhausted half-smile and disappeared into the night.


	5. She's Leaving Home

Laurie's journey home from Dan's townhouse seemed to occur in kind of a strange, hyper-aware haze. She could _feel_ everything that was going on around her, and yet it was like watching it all happen to somebody else.

She felt no surprise when the Knot-Tops stepped out of the shadows. She could sense what was coming, even before they had her surrounded. There they were, right on cue. Briefly, she wondered if this was how Jon felt all the time.

"Hey baby, you look out of it. You high or something? You ain't got no purse?" The leader asked her, almost conversationally.

"The Comedian is my father," she said after a moment, not knowing exactly why this was what came out – except that it was a perfect summary of everything in her life that was fucked up, everything that was ruined and broken and wrong with the world. It could have also served as a warning - she could have told them that she'd have given them five seconds to start running, for example; except she wondered if her father would've even given these punks that much of a head start.

The Knot-Top leader just snorted.

"Come on..._the_ Comedian?" he chortled. "You've got to be joking!" The other gang members dutifully tittered at his pun.

"You're in my way," she said flatly, without the slightest change in expression.

"Man, get a load of this bitch!" the leader crowed pulling a switchblade knife from his pocket. He screamed as she casually lunged forward and dislocated his arm for him. She waded through the next few moments with the vague notion of people running, shrieks, and bodies hitting the ground. She went on her way once that way was clear.

Before long, she was standing in front of the Rockefeller Base. A few minutes later found her in the living quarters she shared with Jon. He wasn't there. She pulled off the clinging black spandex while she contemplated what to do if he still wasn't back by morning, staring at the dark heap of fabric on the floor and wondering whether or not she felt like burning it.

She wondered what it would be like to burn down the whole base along with it.

She showered instead, scrubbing herself raw of imagined filth, and crawled into bed. Images played through her mind - first fixing upon what had been done to Rorschach, her imagination providing details that she hadn't witnessed firsthand; then to everything that had transpired after that over the past twenty-four hours. The image of the little warehouse room with its surgical slab and restraints kept flashing back into her mind's eye; as did her picture, in her father's secret cubbyhole, and the picture of him shaking hands with Vice President Ford.

Her face ached. It took her a moment to realize that this was because she was weeping.

Jon still wasn't back.

She must've slept anyway, because she awoke sometime later to pounding on the door.

*************

"Just a goddamn minute!" Laurie shouted, pulling on her robe. The pounding merely increased in tempo and intensity. Laurie winced; she had a headache. A hangover? What had happened last night?

Then she spotted the black spandex pooled on the floor, and the blessed forgetfulness slid away like a shroud from a corpse. She had the presence of mind to kick the black unitard under the bed before she cracked open the door. There was a Secret Serviceman there, flanked by a couple of regular Army servicemen.

"Miss Juspeczyk, I'm Agent Forbes. It has come to our attention that Dr. Manhattan has been missing since the night before last."

"He said there was something he had to take care of, and he just left -"

"You were also missing, from around the same time until around one 'o'clock in the AM this morning. Do you mind telling us where you were during that time?"

"Yes, I do mind!" she shot back. She was seriously regretting having turned down Dan's offer to stay at his place the night before.

"That's too bad. Dr. Manhattan's absence is a matter of national security. I'm afraid we've only just gotten started here," Forbes said.

They allowed her enough time and privacy to get dressed, at least - a span of time that, upon later reflection, she could have used to make a break for it. One good thing about spandex – it could be collapsed into a bundle small enough to fit into the inner pocket of her trenchcoat without making much of a noticeable bump.

Fifteen minutes later found them all in a small room typically used for small impromptu meetings and presentations.

"You guys are really going to get it when Jon gets back," Laurie said, lighting her first cigarette of the day. Forbes raised an eyebrow and began,

"We've managed to piece together some of the events of the last forty-eight hours, but we still need your help to fill in some of the gaps. We know that Dr. Manhattan teleported away to an unknown location around 4:00 AM yesterday morning -"

"That's it. He just left," Laurie interjected. "He didn't tell me where he was going. He just said something about time being messed up, and vanished."

"And you didn't see fit to share this information with anyone else?" Forbes demanded.

"I figured he'd take care of it, whatever it was. I thought he'd be back long before now -"

"Yes. Well, the fact that he isn't doesn't seem to concern you very much. Do you want to tell me why that is, Miss Juspeczyk?" Forbes asked.

"Of course I'm concerned! It's just...I don't know anything about _time._ It just _is,_ isn't it? How would we know if anything were messed up about it? What would _anyone_ be able to do, except Jon? And why would it be messed up in the first place?"

"We have people working on that now," Forbes said. "In the meantime, we also have questions about your activities over the past few days. We understand that Dr. Manhattan mentioned Count Zodiac before he disappeared. You were at his performance the night before last. Would you like to enlighten us as to how he might be involved in this?"

Laurie's blood ran cold at the mention of Count Zodiac. She fumbled her cigarette, almost dropping it in shock.

"I only told Jon about that! Have you been spying on us?"

"Answer the question, Miss Juspeczyk -"

"You have! You've been spying on us the whole time we've been living here!"

"We tape everything that goes on in the lab, Miss Juspeczyk. We have reason to believe you were out adventuring the entire time you were absent, in direct violation of the Keene Act."

"Look, I went to a friend's place after Jon left last night. You can check your tapes or whatever -"

"We already have." Forbes told her. "You talked about someone else named Dan, Miss Juspeczyk. Dan Dreiberg? Dr. Manhattan seemed to think that there might be something going on between the two of you," Forbes asserted.

"What? No – and besides, that's none of your business!" Laurie shouted in mortified outrage.

"Some thugs were admitted to the emergency room early this morning with some pretty serious injuries. You match the description they gave of their attacker. They also said you claimed the Comedian was your father. You said the same thing yesterday morning, to Dr. Manhattan before he left. You also mentioned Rorschach."

She had. _Oh shit-_

"Look, I just went to a friend's house. My costume hasn't been touched in five years. It's gathering dust! You can go look!"

"I'm sure you're aware that Rorschach is currently wanted by both local and Federal authorities, Miss Juspeczyk. Do you have any idea where he might be?"

"What? Rorschach – how would I know where he is? Nobody knows where he hides out. He could be anywhere -"

"You told Dr. Manhattan that the Comedian attacked him, didn't you; when you told him the Comedian was your father. It would help your situation immensely if you'd tell us where we can find him."

"Well, I don't know, do I? How can I tell you where he is if I don't know?"

"We think you do know, Miss Juspeczyk," Forbes said, his eyes boring into hers behind his dark glasses. "We think you're going to tell us before this is all over with."

"How can I... look, I don't like Rorschach, all right?" Laurie said hurriedly. "Why would I try to help him hide from the authorities? I hope you catch him, honestly, he's crazy and he's a menace! I'd tell you right away if I knew where he is...but I don't, so I can't!"

"We're willing to overlook your offenses if you cooperate with us. Your father has been a valuable asset to this country for over twenty years. I'm sure you'll find that working for us is better than the alternative at this point – which is prison."

For a moment, she could see herself clad in leather and Kevlar and a simple black domino mask, packing an AK-47. Then her mind flashed stomach-turningly back to the slab with its shackles in the little room that had haunted her since the night before, and forward, to the picture of her father shaking hands with Gerald Ford....

- and to the news report that day, the day of the party where she'd tossed her scotch at him, of those two reporters found dead in a parking garage -

_(And what had he been doing in Dallas with Nixon on the morning that Kennedy was shot?)_

"Okay, but can I ask a couple of questions? Laurie hazarded, as several things came together for her at once. Forbes nodded and waved her on.

"Can I carry a flamethrower?" she began.

"Sure. I think we still have your dad's around somewhere. You can have it," Forbes assented.

"Cool. Am I limited to a set number of rapes per week, or is it all right if I just go nuts?" Laurie asked.

"I beg your pardon?" Forbes snapped.

"Say raping people gets old. Will I be allowed to rape entire third world nations if I get bored after that?"

"I don't think you've grasped the seriousness of this situation, Miss Juspeczyk," Forbes said, finally realizing where her line of questioning was leading him.

"Oh, I think I've grasped it perfectly. And I think you can all drop dead. I'd rather rot in Hell than work for this administration, and I'm not going to tell you where Rorschach is. So you can just take me to jail, or have me shot out behind the chemical sheds, or whatever it is you people do."

"If that's your final decision, Miss Juspeczyk...."

"Damn straight it is."

"Fine. Gentlemen, if you two will escort Miss Juspeczyk to the lockup -"

She was over the table in seconds, grabbing the rifle away from one of the soldiers. She rammed him with it, and slammed it across the face of the other, before bringing it to bear on Forbes.

"The only place I'm going is out through the front gate," she said flatly. "Don't bother with an escort. I'll let myself out."

*************

Dan was starting to worry when the phone finally rang. He grabbed it before it completed the second ring.

"Yeah -"

"Dan, you guys need to get out of there! You're both in danger!"

"Laurie? Slow down, are you all right?"

"Yeah, but you guys won't be unless you get out of there _now_ -"

"Are you still at the base? Do you need help?"

"I think we better do as she says, Daniel," Rorschach's voice crackled over the line. Dan wondered how he'd gotten to the basement phone so fast.

"Listen, Laurie, we'll meet you -"

"Don't say over the phone! I'll just....I'll find you guys, all right? Be careful!" The line went dead.

Rorschach had his coat, hat, and scarf on already by the time Dan made it down the stairs. They were out and gone before the spooks in the van across the street had a chance to kick down the door.

*************

Snow fell freely from the sky as Laurie slipped into the docklands, the moisture in the air from New York's waterfront lending the air an additional chill that bit easily through her coat. She hadn't bothered to change into her new costume, such as it was – peeling off her street clothes to slip on the thin unitard would have been madness, in any case. The thin kidskin gloves certainly weren't doing much to fend off the cold. It wasn't long before her hands were numb.

She had no idea how she was going to find Dan and Rorschach at all, and no idea if they'd even escaped. She kept hoping to see the Owlship's floodlights overhead, and had experienced one stab of false hope so far that upon closer inspection had turned out to be the Gunga Diner's elephant blimp.

_Oh well._

She'd stuck to the shadows ever since her escape, clinging to the assault rifle she'd wrested from the guard during her interrogation. It had a full clip of ammo. She'd never fired one before in her life, and frankly wondered if it would be more use to her as a club at this point.

It seemed odd that an airship roughly the same size and shape as a subway car could be so easily concealed as it ghosted its way over and through the New York skyline; she was sure that if anyone could manage such a thing, it was Dan. After all, weren't owls supposed to be utterly silent, unseen unless they were bearing right down on you? That was, if he was crazy enough to have taken to the skies now, with the wind blowing this bad.

She barely had time to complete that thought before she was nearly blinded -

*************

Following their hasty departure from his basement, Nite Owl combed the streets like a man obsessed. He knew it was a gamble, looking for her here; but this was the part of the city that they'd tentatively discussed searching after everything had fallen through so disastrously the day before. Dan had a few ideas where they could go, and hole up until both the storm and the manhunt blew over. He already had fake identities in place, and capital stored away for an emergency such as this. With luck, they'd simply disappear without a trace.

Rorschach was hanging back in the shadows; he'd scarcely said a word since they'd fled. Dan hoped he was resting. It was already below zero out there, and he hated to think of Laurie stumbling through what was already becoming a minor blizzard in an attempt to find them, or track down her father on her own.

Then;

"Hey, is that...there she is!"

*************

Laurie blinked helplessly in the light before her vision cleared, and she saw a dim figure outlined in the hatchway. She numbly reached for the figure and felt someone grasp her arms, pulling her in. Heat washed over her almost painfully as she was borne up out of the freezing cold. She dropped the gun to the airship's deck, and fell to her knees, shaking uncontrollably.

Then Dan was standing there, with a cup of coffee in one hand, and something that might've been a heavy coat or blanket draped across his arm.

"Hi," he said. He greeted her with a relieved grin as he helped her up, draping the garment – the cloak of his arctic costume, as it turned out – across her shoulders and handing her the coffee. She could've wept at the sight. Even the rotting stench of Rorschach's trenchcoat from somewhere within the ship seemed welcome.

"Hi," she said instead, burrowing into the cloak and clasping the steaming cup of warm liquid as close to herself as she could without spilling it or burning herself. "Geez. Nice night, huh?"

"Not so bad, all things considered. What happened after you left?"

"Damn...those bastards were spying on us! They've been spying on us all this time! They heard me tell Jon what happened yesterday. They had the lab bugged," Laurie explained. "I only told Jon because I thought he might help us, but he just took off, and they heard everything!"

"How much did you tell Dr. Manhattan?" Rorschach asked, stepping out of the shadows.

"Enough. Dammit, I'm so sorry, I've screwed us all over..."

"No you haven't," Dan assured her. "I created emergency identities years ago. They should conceal us until we can find the Comedian and bring him to justice."

"Bring him to justice _how?_ To them, he _is_ justice. They tried to get me to work for them. They questioned me...I don't know why, they already had all the information they needed!"

"Wanted to hear you plead for mercy," Rorschach rasped. "Wanted to see if they could break you, and finish us off with pieces."

"Well, I hope they rot!" Laurie snapped. "You realize what this means. We're not just fighting my fa-the Comedian anymore. We're taking on Nixon! And that's not all. I think the Comedian's the tip of the iceberg. I think that this administration has done things that they'd kill to keep secret. I think maybe that's what he does for them," she said.

"Then maybe it's time we helped bring it to light," Dan said.


	6. Say You Need It When You Don't

The sun was cresting over the horizon when the Comedian finally got the call he'd been dreading.

"Your orders are to terminate with extreme prejudice. I know I don't have to explain what that means," the voice on the other end of the line said.

"Yeah. I hear you," The Comedian said. "I'll get the job done."

"See that you do," his superior ordered, and ended the call.

"Shit," the Comedian said, burying his face in his hands. "Shit...."

*************

The Comedian made two phone calls before setting out, the first one being the more difficult. The part of him that was still able to appreciate the irony of the whole situation made a note of the fact that he was clutching the receiver so hard that his hand was shaking.

One ring. Two. Then:

"Laurel Jane, that had better be you! I've been calling and calling and -"

"Hi Sal," the Comedian said, his voice almost breaking in the middle of her name.

"Oh my God. Edward Blake, is that you? What in the hell happened? How does Laurie know? How did she find out? She's not taking my calls!"

"I ran into her out on the street. She started yelling, and it all just came out...h-have I fucked up, Sal?" He asked, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice.

"Well, why don't you tell me, Eddie?" Sally Jupiter snapped back at him over the phone.

"Oh yeah? Well what was that shit about Hooded Justice being her father, huh? Whatever gave her that idea?"

"She came up with that on her own! What was I supposed to tell her, the truth?"

And suddenly, it was all there in his mind – what would have been if he just hadn't lost his temper that day in the trophy room. Him and Sally together, raising Laurie, with neither one of them ever knowing just what it was he did, what he did to keep the gears moving, to keep the mighty secure on their thrones of power, to keep all the trains running smoothly and on time....

"Listen, do I need to come out there? I can be on a plane in half an hour -"

"You stay put," he told her. "She's gotten herself into some trouble, but I have an angle -"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE'S IN TROUBLE, EDDIE?" Sally shouted. "What happened? What did you do?"

"She pissed some people off pretty bad - but she's going to be okay. I have an angle," he repeated.

"Dammit Eddie, tell me what's going on!"

"It's better that you don't know. I'll tell you when she's safe," the Comedian promised. He sucked in a deep breath, and hung up the phone.

After a few minutes that seemed to stretch into eternity, he picked the receiver back up and dialed the second number. After three rings and interminable amount of heartbeats later, he got an answer.

"Yeah...Mo? Is Jerry there? Can you put him on the horn? I needta talk to him. I have a favor to ask. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty important, " the Comedian said.

*************

They set down behind an old warehouse close to the docks. Laurie noticed that Dan seemed to know his way around the place, making her wonder exactly how much he'd planned for a situation like the one they were now in.

Quite well, as it turned out.

It was obvious upon their entrance into the building that it had been a haven for squatters; a steel drum that had been put into use as a makeshift fireplace; crumpled purple Gunga Diner cartons here and there on the concrete floor, with dried out pink-and-yellow rice and the powdered, trampled remains of stale naan triangles in one corner.

Dan passed all of this by and progressed to a large, chained-up vertical sliding door. He pulled a key out of his utility belt and undid the huge padlock, pushing the door upwards. Laurie assisted him when it became stuck.

"Lots of property ends up changing hands in the banking business," Dan explained when he caught sight of her puzzled expression. "This was a part of my inheritance. I sort of bought it from myself using one of the fake identities I created back during the sixties," he said. "It's all perfectly legit on paper. Hopefully it'll take them a while before they even start to look in this direction."

"Dan, that's brilliant!" Laurie exclaimed. Dan's only response was a slightly embarrassed cough.

The space behind the door was large enough to house both them and Archie with room to spare. There was no central heating, but there was a furnace, and they were soon huddled around it like a campfire.

Dan then topped his already miraculous contributions for the evening, producing some sandwiches from the cooler that he'd brought along.

"Dan, you're a saint!" Laurie exclaimed as she started into her roast beef on rye.

"Well. I wouldn't go that far," Dan said. Laurie couldn't really see clearly, what with his mask in the way – but was he actually _blushing?_

"You okay over there, Rorschach?" Dan asked. "We've got plenty. I brought some of those beans you like -"

"Fine like this," Rorschach rasped softly.

Laurie thought he looked anything but. He was visibly sagging where he'd seated himself on some nearby crates, the patterns on his mask shifting and oozing as he stared at the opposite the wall. His sandwich remained untouched.

She was still wearing Dan's arctic cloak. She shrugged it halfway off her shoulders and glanced briefly at Dan, who nodded. Rorschach gave only a token protest when Laurie slung the cape over him, the black-and-white of his mask forming an odd contrast with the brown-and-white ticking on the garment.

*************

He waited until they both dozed off. Soft. No staying power. He could leave now; he could track down the Comedian, and they'd probably never even realize he was gone it until it was too late.

He saw how they glanced at each other, when they thought he wasn't looking. There they were - hunted by the government that scorned them, on the trail of the one who'd betrayed him; and they were acting for all the world like kids on a camping trip.

Yet - all it had taken was a few words from the woman on the floor in front of him, and the sad man with the slumped shoulders and perpetually defeated demeanor who'd mysteriously replaced his old partner was gone, and _Daniel_ had returned.

(But he'd done it for _her.)_

She was a distraction, and her naiveté had almost cost them their lives. Better that they'd left without her, better that they hadn't wasted time cowering in the Comedian's penthouse while he left notes and mocked them.

(Her scream still echoed in his mind...)

He didn't want her pity. He didn't want Daniel coddling him like he was made of porcelain and eggshells. He wanted things back the way they'd been before last night, when everything had gone wrong; before the Comedian had assaulted him.

Back the way they'd been before the Keene Act.

Before Blair Roche had been murdered and fed to two german shepards.

Before Kitty Genovese was tortured and raped and murdered outside her apartment building in front of dozens of witnesses, and s_ome of them even watched_....

_All that matters is retribution,_ he told himself. The Comedian would pay for his sins, for his betrayal of his fellow Mask. For abandoning his daughter -

_("Father working for the government. American hero.")_

No. He didn't want to see the parallels. Didn't want to think about what it might mean. His father had been a good man. He'd worked for President Truman, and he was dead.

(He _had_ to be.)

He'd heard the rumors regarding the Comedian's less savory activities, but had dismissed them as liberal slander. Mask-hating propaganda. (Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Can't win a war against the Reds without breaking a few heads.) He'd known of Hollis Mason's allegations regarding the Comedian's alleged attempted rape of Sally Jupiter, but dismissed it as mere sensationalism – or at worst, as a moral lapse on the Comedian's part.

(She'd wanted it, obviously – the evidence of that lay a few feet away, bundled in her own trenchcoat on one of the bedrolls that Daniel had thought to store on his ship.)

He'd admired the Comedian. He thought he'd understood him.

He'd been wrong. He'd failed to see past the icon to the rot, the corruption, that lay just beneath the surface.

He'd take care of it. The end would be simple, clean, and final for both of them.

*************

Laurie was awakened sometime later by the sense of something looming over her. She snapped into motion, grabbing the purple-clad ankle she saw next to her cheek.

"Where in the hell do you think you're going?" she asked Rorschach.

"Toilet," he said after a moment. Laurie's eyes narrowed. Even with that monotone voice of his, he was a worse liar than she was.

"Right. Couldn't you at least wait until dark to try and get yourself killed?" she grumbled. "You woke me up, and you smell."

"Apologies," Rorschach said. She still had no idea how he managed with the sarcasm without changing his vocal inflections, but he was certainly a pro at it. "Mind removing yourself from my pant leg, Miss Juspeczyk?" he asked.

"_Gzzzzzzz_what's going on, guys?" Dan asked, lifting himself up off of his bedroll. "What time is it?"

"Five minutes before noon," Laurie said, having a clear view of her watch. She squinted, noticing that the hands weren't moving. "At least it was. Looks like my watch has stopped."

"Mine also," Rorschach said, checking his wrist. "Same time."

"That's weird," Laurie said, feeling slightly better for the sleep she'd just had. They'd made it to the warehouse at about 6:30AM, just as the sun was starting to peek over the skyline, and Laurie figured she'd dozed off around an half an hour after that, making this the longest stretch of contiguous sleep she'd had since the mess they were all in had started.

There were no windows in the large garage area where they'd holed up, but Dan soon mounted a catwalk to a roof hatch above.

"Could be around three, judging from the position of the sun," he said. "Who wants coffee?"

Dan had his shipboard computer booted up shortly after that, and almost immediately began running searches on Edward Blake.

"Time passes, while we sit and look at screens," Rorschach scoffed. "Every second Comedian's trail grows colder."

"I still don't know why she did it," Laurie said softly, sitting against the ship's hull with her coffee in hand. "How she could've gone through with it, after what he did. I mean...by rights, I shouldn't exist."

"Well, we're glad you do," Dan said, from his place at the console.

"I remember when my parents broke up...mom and Larry Schexnayder, I mean," she said. "They were fighting about something the night before. I think it was the fact that she slept with my father," she explained. The memory swam on the edge of her awareness, glimpsed like a lantern through a thick fog. She remembered the snow globe she'd found; how it had tumbled and broken, and how her not-father had found her and yelled.

"I wonder if she wouldn't have rather been with the Comedian all along. She didn't seem to ever really be happy with anyone she was with while I was growing up...but then the night I met the Comedian, back when Nelson tried to get the Crimebusters together, she absolutely broke down when she saw him again. I don't get it."

After a moment's awkward silence, she went on;

"She had this long string of boyfriends for awhile, back when I was a kid. Almost like a new one every week. She thought I was too young to figure out what was going on."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rorschach slowly turn to regard her, the patterns on his mask dancing in an unfathomable whirl.

"Some of the things I overheard, you wouldn't _believe,_" she said. "I actually walked in on her and this guy once. I think I was all of seven years old. I thought they were wrestling. She was absolutely mortified," she said. She laughed; a cold, bitter, embarrassed sound.

Rorschach was staring now; she could feel his eyes boring into her through his mask.

"It's strange...sometimes I feel really guilty, being so angry at her all the time, and I feel really bad. Even now," Laurie said.

"_Don't,"_ Rorschach said, suddenly rising to his feet over her, with the same leadenness in his voice that she'd heard in Blake's penthouse.

Laurie shrugged and shrunk back, a little unnerved by his outburst, as Dan glanced apprehensively over his shoulder at both of them.

The swirling inkblots on his mask shifted into something Laurie almost recognized, something that seemed to reflect the turmoil that she was feeling inside, before falling back into dissonance. He looked away, his agitation clear in his body language despite the stiffness in his posture.

"Never make excuses for them. Not _ever,"_ he rasped at her - his presence not so much threatening as oddly _supportive,_ somehow.

Rorschach was an enigma, always had been. And yet...had she just touched on something?

"I'm not. It's just...I'm sure there are plenty of people who've had it worse than I did, and here I am whining about it. I mean, except for her my dad being the Comedian, things were okay otherwise. It wasn't like I didn't have food or a roof over my head. It wasn't like my mom had to sell her body or anything -"

_BAM._ Rorschach's fist hit the hull, making her jump, her coffee splashing everywhere. After staring at Rorschach's mask on and off for the last two days, she couldn't help but note the pattern that the spilled liquid made on her coat, and the floor.

"Guys..." Daniel said, suddenly hovering between them.

"Doesn't matter. A whore is still a whore," Rorschach said, lurching out of the hatchway and back out into the warehouse.

"HEY!" Laurie shouted after him, suddenly angry, despite herself. "Don't you go calling my mother a whore! At least she tried to have some kind of life! She didn't have a death wish after he tried to rape her -"

"Come on, guys. Both of you-" Dan exclaimed, sounding more worried than upset.

"Dan, I'm not assisting in his suicide!" Laurie shouted over him.

"No need. Your assistance never required, anyway," Rorschach said. "Am leaving now. Will find Comedian on own."

"The hell you will!" Laurie cried. She brushed Dan's arm aside and rushed him.

Rorchach spun before she had time to grab at his shoulder, sweeping outward with a blow that wouldn't have done more than knock her off-balance. She dodged it easily, then returned it in full measure. He ducked, grabbed her wrist and spun her down to the floor, pinning her there.

"Go home, Laurel," Rorschach said, his masked head cocked tauntingly to the side. "Maybe Dr. Manhattan returned. Or maybe not. Maybe you traded one absent father figure for another, _hehn?"_

"You _bastard,"_ she roared, and somehow got a foot in front under her, shifting her grip and breaking his hold. Shooting him a look that was something between a grimace and a sneer, (this, finally _this_) she used the momentum to propel herself up and around, pulling Rorschach downward.

"Guys, time out!" Dan bellowed, the sound freezing them both as he swooped in. He grabbed their wrists, lifting them to their feet and separating them. As his shadow fell over her, it struck Laurie that she'd never realized just how _big_ Dan actually was.

"Would you both just simmer down? Save it for the Comedian," Dan said firmly, almost pleading with them both; and for a crazy half-second she expected him to draw her – both of them? - into his arms. Instead, he released them, clapping them both on their respective shoulders so briefly that she almost wondered if she'd imagined it.

Rorschach made an odd noise like a snarl. He pulled back and reached into the inner pocket of his trenchcoat, pulling out a book – _a journal?_ - and a pen, retreated to the opposite wall, and began scribbling furiously.

Still a little shaky, Laurie went for her cigarettes. She was barely able to hold her ball-pipe still to light it. Her eyes stung -

_How dare he, how dare he, how dare he say that, I saved his life, the bastard..._

To her dismay, she noticed that there was now a large, rapidly-cooling stain on the right front panel of her own coat from the coffee she'd spilled. She sighed and rolled her eyes. It was probably too much to expect for Rorschach to pay for the dry cleaning.


	7. Mother Superior Jump The Gun

Laurie was gone before another hour had passed.

"Hey...I think I may have found something...Laurie?" Dan called out from Archie's open hatchway.

"Left," Rorschach said quietly from the shadows. "Took gun with her."

"What – and you didn't stop her?" Dan exclaimed.

"Didn't see her leave," Rorschach clarified. "Noticed her absence perhaps ten minutes ago -"

"And you didn't say anything?" Dan asked him, incredulous.

"Went looking for her. Found this."

Rorschach handed Dan a slip of paper – the same note, in fact, that the Comedian had left on the Owlship the day before. Written on the back, distinguishable from the Comedian's scrawl on the other side (the ink having partially bled through the paper) were the words,

"DAN,

I'M SORRY, I'VE GOTTEN YOU INTO ENOUGH TROUBLE ALREADY. I'M GOING TO GO SETTLE THIS MYSELF. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING. I'M SORRY THINGS ARE SO SCREWED UP.

I GUESS YOU SHOULD BURN THIS OR SOMETHING WHEN YOU FIND IT.

GOOD LUCK,

LAURIE."

"Oh god. I can't believe she..." Dan began, his words trailing off as he clenched his fists in worry. "Listen, I don't like any of our chances if we end up trying to take on the Comedian separately. It's why I wanted us to stay together, as a team. We...Rorschach, why did you say those things to her?" he demanded. "Why did you egg her on like that? She's done nothing but reach out to you and try to help you since this all started! You said it yourself, she could have given us up -"

"Already gave us up when she told Dr. Manhattan," Rorschach said flatly. "She's a distraction. We don't _need_ her, Daniel."

"Goddammit man, she saved your life! If that isn't enough for you...oh geez. Look, we'll get the Comedian, I promise you that - but we need to stick together. I'm going to go look for her," he said, heading back towards the ship. "Are you coming or staying?"

"Cover more ground if we split up," Rorschach said after a moment.

"Are you kidding? Rorschach, you're in no condition to go out there by yourself!"

"Can't have gone far," Rorschach insisted stubbornly. "You take to the sky. I'll search on the ground. Still think this is pointless. Already wasted too much time."

"I still don't think....oh fine, whatever. Go ahead," Dan said resignedly. "We'll meet back here in...oh hell, my watch has stopped. We'll meet back here before dawn, okay?"

Rorschach gave no answer as he slipped out of the warehouse entrance.

*************

Jerry Cornelius released the _Quantum La Gusta's_ ladder and plummeted the remaining ten feet to the rooftop beneath him, grinning wildly as the wind whipped his long hair into a black, unholy nimbus around his pale face. He and Shakey Mo had set right out from his Ladbroke Grove HQ after getting the call from Edward Blake.

Jerry had promised Ed they'd be Stateside inside of eight hours. Circumstances being what they were, they'd made it in five.

He'd have taken the _Phantom V,_ but he'd been advised against it; there were too many in the States, particularly in New York, who might recognize the lavender airship if it were seen, Adrian Veidt being one of them. That would have been awkward, to say the least. They had false registration papers and a cover story prepared in case things started to go south, but Jerry didn't think they would. This was supposed to be a simple snatch-and-grab operation, after all.

Famous last words.

He hit the rooftop at a smooth roll and straightened up, pushing his airshipman's goggles up past the brim of his black military cap and making sure of his needler. It was still secure in its shoulder-holster beneath his black leather car-coat.

It had been way too long since it or he had seen any action.

Edward Blake melted out of the shadows right on cue as the Quantum sped off past the skyline. Shakey Mo had been instructed to keep out of sight, but he would still be in range if needed.

"She's already ditched the boys," Eddie was telling him. "Just give me a little while to clear some things up with her. After that, I don't care if you take her to the motherfucking Lower Devonian...just get her the hell out of here until all this shit blows over. I'll take care of the other two after that."

"Sounds like the Silk Spectre has the C.R.E.E.P.s in a bit of a flap." Jerry remarked. "I'd have thought you'd already be all over an assignment like this. Don't tell me _you've_ gone gun-shy, Ed."

"She's my kid, Jerry. Mine and Sally's," Blake said. "Just do your part, and you'll get paid. And tell Mo to keep his goddamn hands off of her. I can't be held responsible for what'll happen otherwise. She's got my temper."

*************

It would be remembered that the first rupture opened up right in front of the Institute for Extraspatial studies, though nobody was ever able to pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. Those survivors who were willing to come forward after the fact would describe a loud roaring boom, like an explosion – and for several hours, this would be the official explanation for the calamity; that it was all part of an elaborate attack, explosions coordinated by disgruntled costumed-adventurers-turned-terrorists throughout the city.

The most vocal of the survivors by far was a local news vendor by the name of Bernard, who'd been giving his opinions regarding the most recent heated exchange of words between the Nixon Administration and the Kremlin to all and sundry ("_Mark my words, one day it's all going to blow!"_) when it happened.

He remembered the bang, and everything suddenly going dark. It was as if a hole suddenly opened in reality, and bits of everything – concrete, cars, buildings, people - were all just being sucked through it to whatever void lay beyond.

Actually, this was a fairly tame description considering the viscerally atavistic horror that the event inspired in Bernard and everyone else at the scene. It was all he could do to hang onto his newsstand with one hand while trying to keep hold of one of his customers – a skinny, bespectacled black kid who sometimes hung around and read comics by the nearby electric hydrant – as he tried to get his mind around what he was seeing while he watched everything that had seemed solid and stable and _real_ suddenly whisked away into nothingness.

Then there was a flash, and two people stood within the midst of the maelstrom. Nobody was really surprised to see Dr. Manhattan, but the well-dressed albino gentleman who accompanied him (holding his top hat jammed tightly to his skull in one hand and clutching a violin in the other) was something else entirely. Bernard recognized him immediately as the guy who'd been seen playing his violin in broad daylight on the roof of the Institute a few weeks before, before Security ran him off.

Somebody had informed him later that the mystery violinist's name was Count Zodiac, and that he was considered to be some sort of stage magician-turned-rock star in Europe. Bernard had joked that the name sounded like it should belong to "one of those costumed heroes."

He would later chalk this observation up to prescience.

Bernard could never remember exactly what it was they did, but nobody would ever forget the music, for as long as they lived. The wind soon stopped, like a stream of water being slowly cut off by a faucet as the window into blackness irised closed.

*************

The tachyons were nothing compared to this. Dr. Manhattan preferred to think of time as "_an intricately structured jewel, one which humans insisted on viewing one facet at a time._" Ever since his traumatic rebirth, he'd perceived only _one_ timeline, one jewel, one structure in its flawless, finite perfection from beginning to end.

This was like walking into an entire chamber composed of an infinite number said jewels. The light from all the countless facets was blinding him, tiny details warring for his attention as he desperately attempted to cling to the one he knew. It was soon lost in the chaos, mutating beyond all recognition while he watched helplessly, unable to do anything to halt its transmutation.

Count Zodiac, on the other hand, seemed entirely within his element as he raised his bow to his violin. Before long, they managed to fulfill their self-appointed task of mending the rift before more lives were lost.

Then there was utter silence – for about ten seconds. The people who were left stared with wide eyes and shocked, gaping mouths at their two saviors. They were edged slowly closer at first, before thronging around the two heroes, terrified and desperate for answers.

"Everyone, please remain calm!" the superhumanly-magnified voice of Dr. Manhattan reverberated throughout the street. "We have the situation under control."

How he wished that were actually true! He felt their panic as acutely as he did his own.

"This is only the beginning," Count Zodiac reminded him. "Can you hold this area steady for now?"

"I believe so," he answered, certain that his anxiety was clear in his voice.

"Good man," he answered. Behind the lenses of his dark glasses, Count Zodiac's crimson eyes were sympathetic.

"I would advise you all to remain in this location for the time being," Count Zodiac announced to the crowd. "We hope to have the entire city stabilized before long."

There were the obligatory gasps as Dr. Manhattan multiplied himself, the copy accompanying Count Zodiac in a cerulean flash as they zipped away to the scene of the next disaster. The original waited, holding the atoms around them together as he was bombarded by thousands of scenes, countless possibilities that he had never even so much as glimpsed before. Generally, he only saw the things that he himself had witnessed throughout his own singular timeline.

It was all too much, too much for even him to take in at once -

(Somewhere, Laurie was screaming. Her cry was silenced as one of her father's hands wrapped around her throat; the other was crushing her wrist. Rorschach was only seconds away, and he was already seconds too late...)

He reminded himself that in his confusion, he didn't know if what he was seeing was even real, if it was actually happening in the timeline they now inhabited, if it was just another possibility that had not yet occurred, or if he was seeing a moment that had already gone by. He'd only ever been able to see events down his own timeline that he'd experienced personally before. Surely he was only imagining it. Surely...

All his life, all that Jon had ever known had been preordained, all of his steps planned for him, with everything set in stone. He did not see himself teleporting to the scene and rescuing her. Therefore, he remained where he was, the new and unfamiliar sense of _uncertainty_ sending his mind into a tailspin. The moment whizzed by even as he examined it, Laurie's screams echoing and colliding with countless others as the structure of time pitched and buckled around him like tree branches tossed in the wind.

There was already so much suffering, so much death.

Faced with a choice, Jon stayed put and did what he was told.

*************

The city was screaming, and Laurie barely even noticed. She had the slight sense that something might be amiss when she she started seeing people fleeing the area, people who took no notice of her in their haste to depart. She hid from the helicopters as the buzzed overhead, and escaped the notice of the line of tanks that went by on the street below her as she made her painstaking way from rooftop to rooftop.

She had no idea if moments, hours, or whole days had already gone by since she'd left the warehouse, and she didn't care. Finding the Comedian was the only thing that mattered. Everything else could go to hell and burn.

Looking back, Laurie figured she should have known it was a set-up. It was too perfect. There was the Comedian – masked, standing out in the open three rooftops over – and her with the AK she'd swiped from the guard back at the Rockefeller base. It was almost too good to be true.

Which was probably why it failed.

She looked down, considering the weapon in her hands. She was familiar enough with small arms, but she'd never fired anything larger than a 45-caliber Desert Eagle. Should she kneel like a sniper, or would she be able to hold it steady while standing up?

_Oh hell._ She took aim -

And saw him looking straight back at her through the gun's targeting scope.

_Oh shi -_

He was already clearing the distance between them in the time it took her to pull the trigger, the bullet speeding off uselessly into the rapidly darkening sky.

"Hi," he said, stopping only inches away, his hands closing on the weapon and yanking it away from her before she had time to think.

"Rule number one," he said jovially, "Never point a weapon unless you know how to use it." He tossed the gun over the side of the building.

"Rule number two....respect your elders," he said, charging her. She dodged to the side, and rolled - and her heart nearly stopped as his hands closed on her hair.

"Rule three...you should probably do something about that hair," he said, using it to pull her down to the gravel beneath them. She turned, and with a grunt of frustration she rolled before he could get a knee on her back, attempting to dislodge him with a foot swipe. She saw him grin behind the mask, as he gave her hair a painful yank - before releasing it and backing away, his hands outstretched in a gesture that would have seemed comical in other circumstances. The look in his eyes – amusement mixed with that same pain she'd seen in the alleyway, at the party after she'd thrown the scotch, as her mother was driving her away after the failed Crimebusters meeting - almost stopped her. Almost.

"We can play this your way, or we can play it my way," he said. "Which way is it gonna be, kid?"

She charged him with a roar, with hot tears on her cheeks that she barely felt...and felt him grab her arm, felt her feet leave the ground as he swung her up...

_...it could almost be a game...._

...and then bruisingly down, to the rooftop.

"There's all the bullshit about 'spare the rod,' I guess," the Comedian said as stars danced before her eyes, and she fought to get her wind back. "That's one thing my old man never had much of a problem with."

_You had your old man. At least he was there,_ the thought was through her mind and gone before she even knew she was having it.

"Well? Is that all you got?" he asked her mockingly.

Murder in her eyes, she launched upwards, pushing with her feet and turning her ascent into a roll that knocked the Comedian off-balance. He had it back quickly, and maneuvered himself a few feet away, and into a fighting stance.

He wasn't even winded.

"You're not even gonna say anything?" he asked.

"What do you want me to say?" she shouted. "That you're a rapist bastard who tortures people for fun? That you're everything that's wrong with this country and that you and Nixon, and Ford, and Kissinger, and Liddy, and...and the whole sordid bunch of you ought to be shot out into space without helmets? What else is there to say?" she demanded.

"Hell, you've been living on their nickel since you and the Doc hooked up. Let me guess, they give you an allowance? An expense account? Don't see you complaining about that. It's must be great to be able to feel so superior while you're taking their money," he said.

His words stung so soon after Rorschach's own criticism, and rang so true with the misgivings she'd had for years that it stopped her in her tracks.

"Shut UP -" she interjected.

"Oh, don't kid yourself. You're just as much of a whore to this administration as I am," he told her. "I just don't lie to myself about it to make myself feel better. You're just as much of an expendable commodity....why'd you think Jonny boy never offered to tie the knot, huh? You just wait. You'll go the same way as Janey Slater, provided he even keeps an interest in us lesser beings long enough for that to happen."

"Shut your face! You don't know Jon like I do -"

"Oh, I don't? Do you mean to tell me you haven't noticed that he's turning more and more into a particle and less of a person with each passing day? I worked with the guy. I know," he said. "What are you going to do when he ditches you? I heard they offered you a deal. You shoulda taken it."

"What, so I can end up like you?" she spat.

"You already are like me," he said. "They want me to kill you. I could've done so at any point, I already tracked the three of you down to your little clubhouse."

"How -"

"Please. I _grew_ _up_ on these docks," he said. "You have two choices. You can come back with me and tell 'em you're sorry, that you'll give them Rorschach and Dreiberg, and that you'll do whatever it is they want you to do for however long they want you to do it. Option two - I beat the ever-living _shit_ out of you, princess; and you wind up on an airship bound for God-knows-where, where you get to spend the rest of your life knowing that you're on Uncle Sam's shit list. Your choice, right now. Pick one."

"I think I'd rather die," she said.

"Have it your way," he said simply, charging her.


	8. Shining Brighter Than You Do

Somehow, she'd known it would come to this – with her on her knees, as her father slowly choked her out into unconsciousness. She watched as the resigned sadness in his eyes mingled with madness, and flared into a sort of satisfied, sadistic light that chilled the blood in her veins.

"That's it, princess," he whispered. "Just give it up. Just give it up...."

For a second she tore at his hand with her free one, until she remembered her training and tried to pull away, flailing outward with her feet in an attempt to trip him. His grip with both hands tightened further, becoming vicelike; she felt the bones of her wrist grinding together, cracking, her mouth gaping open in a silent scream.

She had just enough time to see the shape that darted in behind her father, before everything went black.

*************

She'd finally closed her eyes when the Comedian felt an explosion of pain in the back of his skull. He went down, letting his daughter drop. He heard a heavy thud as his assailant dropped his weapon – a lead pipe - as he calmly strode over to his victim.

Stars danced in his eyes as he recovered from the blow, fighting unconsciousness. Even so, he didn't need to be able to see to know who'd attacked him.

He expected Rorschach to dive at him, expected to feel fists. He felt a hand at his belt instead, reclaiming the grappling gun, the toy that he'd taken as a trophy after their wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am from two nights before. Then the vigilante dipped down and scooped Laurie up off the ground.

"Get away from her, you freak," he said, getting to his feet and desperately trying to fend off the headrush that accompanied his sudden ascent upwards.

"No.

"She's my kid. Put her down and get the hell out of here."

"So you can finish strangling her? Don't think so," Rorschach said. He fired his grappling gun across to the opposite rooftop, taking Laurie with him.

"GIVE ME MY DAUGHTER, YOU FREAK!" The Comedian called after him. This wasn't working out the way he'd expected at all. Rorschach was supposed to be cowed, broken, defeated after what he'd done to him. Wasn't that the way it worked? Why was he looming there like the personification of Justice itself, cradling the Comedian's own daughter in his arms, while he could only stand there feeling helpless, confused, and _wrong?_

"_Yes, she is...and_ _look what you've done to her_!" Rorschach hissed back at him.

"Look, I just lost my temper, all right? _Come back here with my kid!_" he shouted across the gap.

"Count the hours, Blake," Rorschach answered, calling back across the chasm between the roof where the Comedian stood, and where he now was. "Count the minutes. All you have left." He faded into the shadows with her, and was gone.

*************

Laurie awoke in a dark alley to see Rorschach standing over her, unknotting his scarf from around his neck. She experienced a spasm of panic, remembering stories she'd read of the bodies of known muggers and suspected rapists who'd been found garroted in the street.

He began winding it around her fractured wrist instead, tying off the ends like an ACE bandage. Then she felt the cool leather of his gloved hands on the wounded skin of her neck. The blots shifted contemplatively on his face-that-wasn't-a-face as he inspected the damage her father had inflicted.

"What happened? Is he dead?" she croaked. "Please tell me you finished him off-"

"Don't speak." Rorschach told her. "Windpipe damaged, wrist fractured -"

"Is he dead?"

"Had to get you away from there, make sure you were still breathing -"

"Why? Dammit, I can't believe I was that fucking stupid. You should've just let him finish me off," she sobbed. "Where's Dan?"

"Went out looking for you," Rorschach stated.

"Oh god...that bastard knows where we're hiding! He knows!"

"I heard," Rorschach told her. "Heard everything."

"If Dan goes back, he'll be walking into a trap. We have to find him!" she wheezed.

"Shhh. Just breathe," Rorschach said, lifting her up again. Her mind swam at the sudden movement, and she almost retched.

She faded in and out as he carried her, her half-aware mind barely registering images of a darkened, twisted maze before she faded into oblivion. She woke again on a strange bed that was little better than a cot, to a stench that made her wheeze. She could feel it in her eyes, in her throat, clinging to her hair and her clothes as she gagged.

Smiling beatifically down from the peeling plaster of the wall above her like a saint in a religious icon was the framed face of President Harry S. Truman. The caption "THE BUCK STOPS HERE" was printed in black block lettering below the photograph. She silently repeated the words to herself, striving to make sense of them; but they meant nothing at all to her. She closed her eyes against the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.

The next thing Laurie noticed, aside from the stench and the picture of President Truman, was the fact that her arm had been expertly splinted. Before, she'd have taken exception to the fact that the sleeve of both her jacket and shirt had been slashed up to above the elbow to accommodate the makeshift cast, rather than being rolled up (or removed entirely, in the case of her jacket.) Now it hardly seemed to matter. She hurt everywhere, and her face felt bruised and swollen. She touched her fingers to her lips, and saw blood.

A cursory look around the one-room hovel made Laurie wish she hadn't. A mess of cracked dishes and empty tin cans, still caked with the old, rotting remains of several meals littered the table next to the bed; and when she pulled herself up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, the heel of her shoe upended a stack of issues of the _New Frontiersman. _She picked one up with her good hand. Turning the pages with a kind of numbly fascinated unease, she saw that it and just about all of the others in the pile had been obsessively categorized with colored adhesive tabs marked with cryptic phrases that were barely legible to her eyes. She could see several more stacks of the magazines behind the bed and under the table, back issues probably going back several years.

"_Wow,"_ she croaked, flinching at the sound of her own voice as it exited her wounded throat. The fact that she was actually _in Rorschach's home_ was still taking a while to sink in, but it was starting to look pretty undeniable. Hadn't she said it to Forbes before?

("_No one knows where he hides out."_)

She was there _now._

There was no TV, though she did see a single, small radio that looked like it had probably been rescued from a garbage can somewhere. Covering her nose with her sleeve, she peered over to see what looked like a note taped to the back of the apartment's only other piece of furniture, a single wooden chair. It read, in the same strange, barely-legible hand;

_City in chaos. Have gone to Find Daniel._

_Don't leave. Don't answer the door._

_Feel free to listen to radio within acceptable volume levels._

_Lots of reading material to keep you busy. Very educational. Don't disturb bookmarks. Will return soon._

_Thank you for not smoking._

"_Thank you for not smoking?_ He keeps his place like this, and he's worried about me smoking in here?" Her throat still ached - but it had been at least a few hours since her last cigarette, and she was itching for another one. She fished her ball-pipe out of her coat pocket, only to see that the glass stem had snapped during the fight with her father. She just stared at it for a moment with an intensely annoyed glare, hoping against hope that Jon's ability to mend things at the molecular level by force of will alone had somehow rubbed off on her. No luck. Signing, she shoved the pieces back into her pocket and switched on the radio, turning it to a local news station. The report was already in progress:

"...explosions throughout the city. Authorities believe it to be the work of Laurel Juspeczyk, aka the second Silk Spectre, who escaped from the Rockefeller Military Research Institute after being questioned regarding an altercation the night before. Miss Juspeczyk is considered armed and highly dangerous, and a source has informed us that she may be working with the costumed vigilante known as Rorschach. Dr. Manhattan could not be reached for comment at this time, though it is rumored that the Comedian has been called upon to investigate these attacks. In other news, the authorities may have also discovered the identity of the second Nite Owl, who adventured with Rorschach during the 1960s and early 1970s..."

_Dr. Manhattan could not be reached for comment._ Where was Jon? Why couldn't he be reached? Why wasn't he putting things right? Why had he left her to Forbes and his brownshirts - with no solid explanation to give them for his departure, and for the chaos that was said to be engulfing the city?

Laurie switched off the radio. She shakily sank down to the floor next to the bed, trying not to choke from the smell as her mind once again attempted to deny the reality of what she'd just heard. Never in her life had she felt so abandoned. She'd known she'd probably be hunted when she'd fled the base, and the Comedian had admitted that he'd been sent to kill her. But...being framed for terrorist attacks? This was _way_ beyond anything that she'd prepared herself to deal with.

Then her mind flashed back to what Rorschach had said at Dan's hideout, and what the Comedian had said up on the roof -

(_"Maybe you traded one absent father figure for another -"_)

_("A whore is still a whore -")_

_("You're just as much of a whore to this Administration as I am -")_

She gritted her teeth against a bitter surge of renewed anger – this time, directed at herself. She'd never really had any illusions regarding her role in the eyes of Jon's handlers. But back in D.C., it had been easy to pretend differently, that all that top-secret government crap was just on the sidelines.

Lost in thought, she barely heard the scrape of the windowpane as Rorschach came in through the window, inkblots solemnly shifting as he slipped inside.

"Laurel?" he queried, glancing around the small room until he finally spotted her, squatting small and still amongst the stacks of his magazines.

"Was looking for Daniel. Came back to see how you were. Brought you the evening edition of today's paper." He tossed it down to lie in front of her.

"'DARK' SPECTRE GOES ON RAMPAGE," the headline screamed.

"I already heard on the radio," Laurie told him, her voice raw-sounding as she eyed the headline of the _Gazette_. "Rorschach, what are these explosions they're talking about?" It was all she could do to keep her voice level.

"Haven't seen firsthand. People fleeing affected areas of the city," he said. "Mass panic, rioting in the streets. Like good old days, _hehn?_ But I forget – you were in D.C. with Dr. Manhattan in '77." He looked at her directly, and once again she could feel eyes boring into her from beneath his mask.

"They're blaming _us? _How is that possible? How would we even be capable of blowing up half the city?" Laurie asked.

"They thought they had you under their control. Thought they were able to make you forget what you are_._ Realized they were mistaken when they saw you making a run for the fence. Probably why they're going to such lengths to frame you," Rorschach said. "Unless there's something else - something you're still not telling me."

"I don't know!" she exclaimed, clenching her good hand into a fist. "I don't know anything! They tried to get me to give you up, to tell them where you were. They knew Dan was involved somehow because they were listening in on me and Jon, but they didn't know you were with him because I never said anything to Jon about that. All I said was..."

Then it hit her -

"...was that the Comedian is my father. And Jon freaked, and said I wasn't supposed to tell him then. I wasn't supposed to find out until three years from now."

"Explain."

"Jon said that the fact that I already knew meant there was something wrong with time, that things weren't happening the way they should be. Then he just vanished. They questioned me about that, too. He also said Count Zodiac was involved somehow, but just I don't see how he could be."

"Count Zodiac is a Mask. Used to be well known in Europe, England. Not so much here. Operated around the time of the Minutemen. Worked against the Nazis, hunted down escaped war criminals. Saw him the day he played on roof of Institute for Extraspacial Studies. Thought it might have been a message."

"You saw....but I was there too, that day!" Laurie exclaimed. "I didn't see you anywhere!"

"Wasn't in uniform," Rorschach informed her.

She'd been coming out of the Gunga Diner with some takeout when she'd heard it; a high, thin strain of sound that seemed to float down from the very Heavens to penetrate her consciousness like an arrow.

She'd looked up to see a figure perched on the roof of the Institute, a pale, white-haired man dressed in evening attire (immaculate suit, tophat, tails, the works) and at first she wondered how the hell he'd gotten up there. Then that and all other considerations were borne away as the music swelled in strength and intensity.

It was like something out of a fairy tale -

(-"_some of that magical romance and bullshit that they promise you when you're a kid,"_ she could still hear her mother shouting dimly, across the space of her memory – but hadn't she had romance and fairy-tales aplenty, with Jon?)

And it had seemed that she was not the only one affected. Everyone from the vendor at the newsstand, to his customers, to the foul-smelling, threadbare little red-haired hobo holding the doomsday placard off to her left was absolutely transfixed. Crazy as it was, she felt that she could almost make out _speech_ within the music - though the words, whatever they were, went by too quickly for her to make out what was being said. But otherwise, it was like time just slowed down as they were enclosed in the bubble of sound....like they were existing within a time all their own, while the music was playing...

(.....slow time...)

(...foul smelling....)

(...WAIT....)

"You say Dr. Manhattan mentioned Count Zodiac by name?"

"He did. he said he might have everything to do with time being messed up. And then he just teleported away."

(...how often had she seen the SAME short, red-haired sign-carrying hobo while she'd been in that area? He was practically a fixture over on that block. She'd never given him any more thought than she had any other of New York's street-dwelling denizens, and avoided making eye contact the way most New Yorkers of more stable means habitually learned to do, to keep from being hit up for change.

Thing was, he'd never asked her for so much as a dime. But she remembered passing him by one day on her way to the newsstand for a _Gazette_ to read in the Gunga Diner while she sipped coffee and waited for her order. His unnaturally intense eyes in his otherwise utterly blank, expressionless face had given her the creeps. He'd been carrying the day's issue of the _New Frontiersman_ under his arm, his hand shoved in his pocket as he shambled stiffly past her with his huge sign propped up in the other. "THE END IS NIGH.")

(...It was HIM, all along. She wanted to laugh. And why not? It was funny, the idea that half the city lived in fear of the grim little carrot-topped, freckle-faced guy with his freaky eyes and his proclamation of doom.)

(Come to think of it, it was kind of cool.)

"Maybe message was warning. Two fellow Masks in attendance. Warning obviously meant for us."

"I'm not so sure about that," Laurie said, as she considered the odd incident. It had seemed to her at the time that the albino musician was trying to reach as many people as he could, as though he had truly striven to make himself heard above the noise of the city.

"He got a band together, you know. They were at CBGB's two nights ago -" she paused, uncertain how to proceed. "I was just coming back from the show when I found you," she said finally.

Rorschach's inkblots swirled incomprehensibly as she tried in vain to wrangle some meaning from them, from the way he was just standing there watching her speak. She still didn't know how he was dealing with it, how he was even walking around after what the Comedian had done to him. The crazy kamikaze vibe she'd gotten off of him that night - and ever since - was still there.

"How did it happen, Rorschach?" she asked, the one question that had been nagging at her since the whole mess began. "How did he get you?"

"Was investigating a heroin smuggling ring," Rorschach said. "Comedian sought me out, said he was investigating same group, said he wanted to _team up," _Rorschach said, his hands balling into fists. "Felt _honored, _at first. Turns out he just wanted to find out how much I already knew. Drug smuggling ring was taking money from CIA contacts. Was also into prostitution, human trafficking. People had to be told," he said. "Comedian didn't agree. Felt a pain in the back of my skull. Woke up drugged, chained to a table._ Ngggghh_ why are you asking me this?" he snarled suddenly, startling her. "You were there! You saw what he did! Lay for hours, in that alley. Bleeding, broken. Waited to die," he told her. "Until you came."

"Well, what else was I supposed to do? Just walk off and leave you there, or let you wander off and maybe bleed to death?" Laurie asked. She honestly couldn't tell if his words were meant to express gratitude or resentment. "Hell, he was probably coming back out to finish the job when I showed up. Did you think I was just going to stand there and watch?" She shuddered. "God. If I'd been a second too late..."

"Wondered about that. Seemed _convenient,"_ Rorschach said.

"Convenient? How - what do you mean?"she demanded.

"Couldn't figure out what you were doing there. Rockefeller Base is in other other direction from nightclub, across the city. Had no reason to be where you were."

"That's crazy! I -" she began, her mind racing back over the events, trying to recall the journey from the club to the base that had brought her across the alleyway in which she'd found him – and hitting a wall.

He was right.

She hadn't thought about it once since then, but he was absolutely right.

"I..." she tried again, unable to summon any explanation, any reason that even made sense to her.

(She'd felt as if she could just coast back to the base from the club like music on the night breeze, carried by the wind like her namesake – invincible, invisible, intangible. A spectre flowing in slow time.)

(_Her_ time.)

(She hadn't even felt the cold. Not until she saw the man lying on the concrete, and she was screaming up into her father's face...)

"I don't know. I...I left the club and it's like I just lost time," she said. "Then I saw you lying there...and _he_ was there...and everything just happened. And now everything's screwed up."

"Daniel still missing. Work to be done," Rorschach said. "You'll stay here for now. Instructions set out in note still apply."

"What? You've got to be kidding!" Laurie exclaimed, getting to her feet.

"Wounded. Arm broken. Unable to fight, and they're hunting you. At best, you're target; at worst, liability. Better to stay here for now. For your own safety."

"Listen, if you think I'm just going to sit here and read right-wing magazines while you and Dan have to face God-knows-what, you've got another thing coming! You're not leaving me here! I've fought hurt before, and I can do it again. Besides, I'll just leave anyway if you try it. You just watch me." The irony that they'd been having this same argument in reverse almost from the moment they'd left Dan's basement two days ago wasn't lost on her.

(with her standing here now, almost a mirror image of him with the bruises on her face and neck and the coffee stain on the front of her trenchcoat, identical to his except...was that _blood?_)

"Believe you would," he said, after a moment. "Have to leave through window. Could be spotted in the corridor. Will need to blindfold you before we leave. I'm sure you understand. Won't be pleasant for me either, believe me." Laurie did; she remembered how he'd flinched away from her in the alley - and just judging from his body language, it looked as if he was not relishing the thought of carrying her down at all.

"Look - I know you don't want to compromise your identity - but if I was going to give you up, I'd have done it when they were questioning me."

(And she _knew._ Not that she was ever going to let on to the fact she knew, however. She knew very well what Rorschach's reaction might be, if he realized she'd figured it out...)

"This identity. My true face," he told her, pointing to his mask. "Without it, nobody knows who I am. Can't compromise that. Not for anyone."

"All right," she conceded. "But if you drop me, I'm _so_ going to kick your ass."

"Won't drop you," he said, pulling his scarf off again. She shuddered as he wound it around her head, tying it around her eyes.

"Apologies."

"Just don't drop me, okay?"

"No. For what was said earlier, back at warehouse. Triggered bad memories. I spoke out of turn."

She pursed her lips, not sure what to say to _that_ either, and he didn't seem all that eager to elaborate.

"Okay, I accept. Just promise me you won't try and get yourself killed, and I'll buy us all dinner if we live through this - provided we're not all in prison and my assets haven't been seized, or if the city hasn't completely imploded by then."

She fully planned on living up to her part of the bargain, too – and the mental image of the Maitre D in panic at the sight of herself and Dan walking into Rafael's with Rorschach in tow almost caused her to lose it right there. Or without his mask, in his tattered suit. (And wouldn't he need to check in his sign at the coat-check room? Probably.)

Laurie figured it would probably be in her best interest to order in, if it ever came to that.


	9. Revolution

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

It's been over a year since I updated. I want to thank everyone who has left reviews, and apologize to you all (particularly Orangesparks and Brancher over at Livejournal.) The truth is, after a strong start I just never felt that any of my follow-up material was up to par. I finally went back to it and revised it, and here it is. On with the story.

************

Jerry knew immediately upon meeting the Comedian at the rendezvous point that things had not gone according to plan. He'd been drinking; Jerry could smell the bourbon on his breath from where he was standing.

"It's all fucked up, Jerry," Blake told him. "Everything. She wouldn't even fucking listen to me, and now the city's going to Hell in a handbasket – well, it always was, really," he rambled on. "But reality's falling apart, and now they're blaming Laurie for it. They're trying to pin all this temporal anomaly shit on her, can you fucking believe it?"

Jerry drew his needlegun from its shoulder-holster and gave it a quick once-over.

"She just isn't seeing the big picture yet, Ed," he said. "I could try bringing her around."

"God, Jerry, if you would. Kids these days just need the right kind of persuasion," the Comedian assured him. "You got any Ketamine?"

Jerry frowned.

"That's Frank's bag. Not mine," he protested.

"Aww come on, Jerry. Wouldja hit me once, for old time's sake?"

"If you insist." Jerry chambered the desired round and aimed the needlegun at his friend. He pulled the trigger. "Just leave everything to me."

*************

The trip out of the window ended up being fairly anticlimactic - a short, sharp drop out of the window, followed by a sudden stop that rattled Laurie's teeth a little. She heard him grunt when his feet hit the ground.

"You're still hurt yourself, you know," she accused.

"City has been tearing itself apart for years. Do you think it cares if we're wounded? Scum won't wait for us to heal," Rorschach said. "No sick days for us. No vacation time – except, of course, for those of us who elected to retire."

"Jeez, I was just saying," Laurie said. "I get it, okay? You're right. You're absolutely right. None of us ever should've quit," she said, the exasperation in her voice tempered by the very real guilt she felt underneath. "I know that now. I'm sorry we left you alone in all this shit. Can we go now?"

He didn't respond, and for a minutes she wondered if he'd simply taken off and left her there. She reached for the blindfold, nearly jumping when she felt him take her left (good) hand before it could get there. Then he was leading her along; his grip was so tenuous that there was an awkward moment around ten minutes into it when her her hand slipped out of his entirely, and she floundered for a moment.

"Dammit Rorschach, I'm not going to give you cooties!" she exclaimed.

"Apologies. Not enjoying this any more than you are," he said.

She could tell he meant it, too. In her mind's eye she could almost see him blushing with his teeth on edge behind the fabric of his mask, as if what they were doing was horribly aberrant. She remembered how he'd behaved during the nightmarish trip to Dan's, after she'd found him. Then, she'd assumed he was simply traumatized by what had happened; but now it seemed that there was a lot more to it than that.

She'd secretly believed him to be a horrible pervert - with his battered and stained trenchcoat and hat, he'd always looked to her like a child's drawing of the archetypal faceless "stranger" that they were never supposed to talk to. However, nearly two days in his presence had shown her how off the mark she'd been.

Laurie remembered the sadistic light in the Comedian's eyes. _Of course he'd think it was funny to take someone so unwilling engage in even the most basic displays of human contact, and and force them to participate in the most intimate, _she thought, rage flaring back to life in her chest – along with the fierce _protectiveness_ that she'd felt towards him ever since she'd discovered him lying there after her father had finished with him. She realized it had been there all along since that moment, and she'd only just recognized it for what it was.

She heard Rorschach move behind her, and felt his hand on her shoulder. He steered her like that for the rest of the way.

About half an hour later, he reclaimed his scarf.

"Are those fires?" Laurie asked, staring off into the distance.

"Explosions over that way. Rioting," Rorschach said.

"Think Dan might be in there somewhere?" she asked.

"It's a possibility. Supposed to meet back at the warehouse at dawn. Figured he might have gotten sidetracked in the chaos. He may need our assistance. Warehouse might not even be there anymore."

She nodded, wincing at the pain in her bruised neck. Her fractured wrist hurt, and several places on her body ached right down to the bone. She hadn't eaten since before she'd left the warehouse, and that had been some C-rations that Dan had thrown onto the Owlship before his and Rorschach's flight from his condo.

A quick glance at Rorschach confirmed that he was in no more a condition to face the trials ahead than she was. But they'd just have to deal with it and soldier bravely on, because that was what heroes did.

"Well, we'd better get to it," she said resignedly. "This city isn't gonna save itself."

"Been saying that for years," Rorschach said grimly. She decided to let it go this time.

*************

The next couple of blocks were eerily deserted. They could hear shouting from somewhere ahead, and see the glow of flames - but they always seemed to be around the next building, over the next bend.

_And of course, we're the ones moving towards it,_ Laurie thought sardonically.

"Rorschach, listen...whatever happens, I want to thank you for saving me back there," Laurie said, as they made their way around the shell of a brownstone that appeared to have already burnt itself out. Odd, now that she looked at it, some of the wreckage looked really old. Like ruins, almost - as if whatever happened had gone on years ago, instead of just hours.

"Urrmm," he responded, cocking his head to the side. For a moment she thought he was merely being dismissive, until she realized he was listening for something.

"Here they come," he said.

Then she heard it, as "they" came closer; one long, endless shriek that seemed to burst forth from a thousand throats. Her jaw dropped when she saw the rapidly approaching wave of human bodies, like a swarm of rats or roaches teeming up out of a flooding sewer. She saw the whites of a hundred terrified eyes – eyes that were no longer rational, or even sane in the face of whatever they were fleeing.

For a moment, it simply looked _dark_ behind them. Not the gloom of the night around them, but really, impenetrably _dark,_ with the odd bursts of firelight she was seeing around it failed to illuminate the blackness. It was a _hole_ - a black hole that was hanging raggedly in the air, its edges surrounded by an odd, thin nimbus of rainbow light. It was sucking in everything that came within a few feet of it.

Then she saw the really awful part. Flamethrowers. Men with rifles and flamethrowers, around six or seven of them, who were herding people – _civilians_ – into it. The people who were streaking past the alleyway where she and Rorschach were now crouching were the lucky ones - the ones who'd managed to escape. Laurie even saw children with them.

"God...oh god. Oh shit," Laurie said, as the horror unfolded before them. More than anything, she wished she'd hung on to that assault rifle.

Fireworks illuminated the night sky as shadowy figures in black detached themselves from the cover of the surrounding buildings, pelting the men with things that flashed and smoked with a series of loud bangs.

Laurie felt herself rush forward almost before she realized what she was doing. She flew at the nearest flamethrower-wielder, taking him down with a series of kicks and punches with her left hand that seemed to lead with a natural rhythm into the face of her next target before they could figure out where the attacks were coming from and bring their weapons to bear.

Then Rorschach was beside her on her right. She realized that he'd put himself there deliberately - that he was covering her wounded right flank. She saw him take down another one of the gunmen with a well-thrown garbage-can lid, before grabbing his weapon and using it to beat another one of the thugs down to the ground. He dropped it and recovered his garbage-can lid.

Not being able to use her right hand certainly sucked – but it was one of the things that she'd trained for. You just learned to work around it.

"Silk Spectre!" a voice shouted from nearby. She spotted one of the black-clad people a short distance away. She closed her eyes and ducked out of the way, dodged to the left, and rolled - just in time to avoid being incinerated on one side and flashbanged on the other. The guy with the flamethrower behind her received the full brunt of the stun grenade's effect.

Ammo exhausted, the black-clad figures raced back towards cover. Laurie couldn't see much of their faces, which were covered by red and black bandannas. She couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears, thanks to the stun grenade. She looked up – straight up.

The hole was less than twenty feet away.

"Nothing," Rorschach said, his words coming in like a weak radio signal over the static, like a sermon heard in bits and pieces over an AM radio in the middle of the night. "All there is in the universe. All we have to look forward to. No God. No meaning in the cosmos. No purpose to our damned, doomed existence. Only entropy and death."

That wasn't the sense Laurie had at all. In fact, Laurie felt that it was almost _sentient_ as she gazed back into it. Sentient and calm. _Waiting._

_We all know it's there. We feel it, always hanging over us. We distract ourselves from it, we try to hide from it, we try to blot it out, we live our lives trying to ignore it....but in the end, we all know it's there, waiting for us._

"No," Laurie said, barely able to hear her own voice as the ringing subsided. "It's not nothing. It's just..._outside._ Outside time." She took a step closer. "Rorschach, I think...I think it _is_ God. Jesus...we'd be able to see it all the time, if it weren't for all of this shit in the way." She waved her arm, indicating the scene around them - but meaning all physical creation, by extension. She knew she was babbling, overwhelmed by what she was seeing. She didn't care.

She looked back over the battlefield, at the people who were lying charred and dead, the people who hadn't made it to the hole before being burned alive. She saw the ones who were lying charred and shot, in agony.

"Why don't you do something?" she demanded, screaming into the void. Within the serene blackness, she felt something stir. Felt her own words echoed back at her, in her mind -

_**'Why don't you do something?'**_

She felt she could almost make out something at the other end. A bright silver light, branching off into infinity. She couldn't look away, couldn't step back, couldn't tear herself away from it. She suddenly wasn't so sure she wanted to. She saw herself, then, as if she were hovering out over her own body. She both felt and saw herself taking another step closer to the edge of that silver path, her feet moving seemingly of their own accord.

"LAUREL!" Her head turned, to regard the swirling darkness in the white latex of Rorschach's mask, almost a reverse-image of the other abyss in front of her. The dichotomy was so startling that it wrenched her awareness back, back to herself. His hand was on her shoulder, restraining her.

The black-clad figures were among them now, kneeling by the wounded. Burns were being salved and bandaged. One of them approached Laurie and Rorschach, and pulled the bandanna from its – her – face. The speaker was a black woman who looked to be in her early twenties. Laurie saw that there were anarchy symbols on her bandanna and the kerchief that was tied around her head – a red capital A with a circle drawn around it.

"We've got a makeshift hospital set up a short distance from here," the woman explained. "We need someone to help us carry these people." Laurie saw the her dart a glance at her splinted arm, then over to Rorschach.

"Well?" Laurie said with an upraised eyebrow.

"Ennh" he answered, and bent to lift one of the victims.

One of the fallen gunmen was stirring. Laurie aimed a kick at his head, then bent and wrenched his weapon out of his limp grasp. She slung it over her back, and then bent to help the anarchist assist a woman who'd sustained a gunshot wound to the leg with the arm that wasn't broken.

"Lead the way," she said.

*************

The Comedian is floating in the K-Hole, surrounded by images of his past.

As far as he's always been concerned, the past is the past, and not worth worrying about. It's over, gone, and done - or so he's always thought. The events of the past forty-eight hours have taught him that the past can sneak up on you, can take you down from behind when you least expect it, and leave you sobbing and broken on the floor.

It's 1940, and he's in the trophy room with Sally, committing the act (or trying to) that will distance them forever.

It's 1948. On a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon he and Sally are together, committing the act that will connect them forever. Laurie is born nine months to the day of her conception.

It was 1955. He sees to Hooded Justice, dumping the bodybuilder into the bay when he's finished. He beats Ozymandias like a red-headed idiot stepchild when the preening ponce comes looking for him.

1966. He's telling off Nelly, who is protesting pathetically as his ridiculous map goes up in flames. He's lighting his daughter's cigarette, marveling at how she's turned out, and wondering if she knows she's his.

Then Sally is yelling at him and shoving Laurie into the car. He can only watch as she drives away, with Laurie staring back at him through the rear window. He wants to stop them, to explain, to shout _Hey wait, she's my kid too,_ but all he can do is stare back at Laurie, whose expression is equal parts sadness, confusion, and embarrassment.

He never forgets it.

It's 1971. He's gunning down the whore who cut his face. She's carrying his child, and he doesn't even care. She cut his fucking _face,_ goddamn it. Doc Manhattan is there, and he doesn't do a goddamn thing to stop it.

The Doc is already involved with Laurie - and there's not a goddamn thing Blake can do about that, though he'd like to.

1972. He's being feted by Nixon and Ford "for services to the Country" - in reality, because he took care of Woodward and Bernstein in a parking garage. Laurie is tearing into him over what happened between him and Sally. _Only once,_ he tells her, right before she throws her scotch in his face. The Doc shows up and whisks them both away, leaving him standing there alone with the sharks.

1975. His first mission with Jerry Cornelius and his crew. The place they're infiltrating is a British protectorate, and MI5 wants them along to supervise in case Blake gets out of hand. He doesn't think much of the panty-waist spotted-dick eaters, and he lets them know it by eating Jerry's stash of chocolate digestives and smoking his Upmanns. Jerry retaliates by spiking the rest of his digestives with something his brother Frank cooked up. Blake wakes up naked and bound to his bunk, covered in silk scarves, body paint, and glitter left over from when Jerry and Shakey Mo Collier flew the band Hawkwind to the Reading Festival that year.

Their prank war never truly ends.

Later that year, He and Jerry are bailing out of Jerry's lavender fucking airship _The Phantom V_ to the tune of 's _Get It On,_ which is being played over the loudspeaker. Two hours later they barely escape with their lives, the jungle in flames around them. They get roaring drunk on the deck of _The Phantom._ The Comedian is telling Jerry he's a beautiful man right before he goes to tackle him. Jerry is a little bit faster and a little less drunk, and nails him with the needler first.

_Aww shit Jerry, I was just kidding around,_ Blake says, slurring his words as the drugs begin to take effect.

_So am I,_ Jerry says, pinning Blake to the console and straddling him. Everything goes black and white, like a photographic negative. Jerry is grinning madly with his black teeth, his milk-white hair strewn about his shoulders as he bends down, black lips clamping down on Blake's own.

_You little bastard,_ Blake responds almost admiringly, as Jerry has his way with him.

1977. He's busting heads with Nite Owl during the riots, only he's doing most of the work while Nite Owl stands there looking horrified. Blake finds himself wondering what's wrong with him.

_What about the American Dream?_ Nite Owl asks.

_It came true. You're lookin' at it,_ Blake explains, before he fires another canister of teargas into the crowd.

1982.

Two nights ago.

Two nights ago, he has Rorschach manacled down to a little table in a back room that folks like him use for interrogations that the CIA wants kept quiet. The little freak refuses to break - and as much as he's enjoying toying with him, it's pissing Blake off to no end...

Blake tosses him out into the alley like garbage when he's finished. But then Laurie is there somehow, as if Heaven intends her to bear witness to all his sins. (Can't a guy get some action in this town without his kid finding out about it?) She's screaming, and he tells her the truth. It just slips out.

She's hitting him. And as his nose shatters under her fist, Blake realizes that he has well and truly screwed the pooch this time. There's no coming back from this. This knowledge is what keeps him from losing his cool as he tells his daughter that she's just had her one free-throw, turning his back on her and walking off instead of pummeling her into the ground.

Last night, Nixon is telling him that his daughter's life is forfeit. The Doc has just abandoned her to the wolves, and he hears that she fought her way out of the Rockefeller Military Research Center rather than working for them, or handing over Rorschach.

He's being ordered to kill his little girl, who he knows very well is out to get him.

He calls Jerry instead.

Now they're telling lies about her. Everything's going to hell, and they're placing the blame on her.

He doesn't blame her for hating him. Hell, he hates himself. He doesn't blame her for pulling the gun on him - that shit was hilarious, after all - and it _was_ all part a trap he'd set for her, anyway. God knows he'd traded blows with his old man often enough; expressing profound affection in the form of extreme violence has always been a tradition in the Blake household. The fact that Laurie has lashed out against him so vehemently is just more proof that she's a chip off the old block, after all.

But now, Nixon and the rest have turned what should have been a private little family affair into a very public catastrophe, after all he's done to put them in power and keep them there.

Fuck them. He has enough dirt on them to bury them forever. If she goes down, he's going to make sure that they go with her.


	10. Sleeping Awake

Blackness, all around. And then...

Silver. A path of silver stretches before and behind her, off into infinity in both directions. As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she notices other paths, an entire web of them, a gossamer latticework of incomprehensible complexity. She is dazzled by flashes of color in the darkness, spheres expanding and collapsing in slow motion. For a long time, all she can do is stare.

Then she sees them. The angels. That's the only name she can think of to describe them, though they don't resemble angels as she's seen them depicted in any painting, or rendered in any stained glass window. Impossible beings of metallic scale and crystalline carapace, all of them trailing some kind of glittering dust like spilling blood as they tear each other apart.

Her first thought is, _"Why are they fighting?"_ This merges with the sudden realization that these godlike entities with their wildly varied forms (for no two are alike) all of them larger than life, are possibly what she and her kind have aspired to be, from the first time any of them put on a costume or pulled on a mask.

Then she thinks,_ "Why are they killing each other? Why? It's horrible. I can't even tell which side is which..."_

And then they are upon her, in less time than it takes her to blink. They tempt her, they attempt to solicit her allegiance, even as they are enraged by her ignorance and presumption. They are grabbing at her, choking her, crowding her out. She can't move, she can't even breathe...

_("Play for Law, and everlasting power will be yours.")_

_("Play for Chaos, and gain everlasting freedom.")_

_("The Singularity will bring peace and order to the Multiverse.")_

_("The Chaos Engineers promise an end to stagnation, the death of boredom.")_

She panics_._

_("I DON'T KNOW. LET ME GO. LEAVE ME ALONE. I DON'T EVEN KNOW!")_

Mercifully, the combatants fade even as she can feel her sanity begin to shred in the grip of their claws, fists, and feelers, if it hasn't abandoned her already. One of them, a being seemingly as reptilian as it is insectoid (and yet, she has the mental double-image of a salty, crusty, disreputable old sailor when she looks at him) wryly remarks, _"Perhaps you should look more to your own for answers. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, eh?"_ before he vanishes.

Then, all is silence, and she awakes.

_************_

"Hi."

Laurie opened her stinging eyes, her blurred vision gradually shifting into focus as the questioner materialized in front of her - a small girl of about five or six, with cappuccino-colored skin and the gravest eyes Laurie had ever seen on a child.

"Hello," Laurie answered softly, her voice rasping as if through smoke, or from long disuse.

"Are you hurt?" the little girl asked.

She took a quick inventory of her present situation, the bizarre dream already fading from her mind. Arm still broken, ligaments that were probably torn; ribs that felt cracked, bruises that felt bone-deep. Her face stung terribly; she touched it with her good hand, and felt drying blood.

"No more than I already was," she answered. "I guess I just dozed off for a minute." Her thoughts turned to Rorschach, and she suddenly recollected what had happened with a flash of alarm.

"What happened? Did everyone make it? Where's Rorschach?"

"Here," Rorschach's monotone sounded from across the room.

"Mom, she's awake," the girl exclaimed over her shoulder.

"Thanks, Selena honey. Please don't bother the masked adventurers," her mother said as she stepped into view. Laurie recognized the woman as the one who'd approached her during the fight, one of the black-clad flashbangers who'd come to their aid.

"She's not being a bother," Laurie said. Had she detected a note of nervousness in the woman's voice?

After all, it hadn't been all that long since masked adventurers - her father, in particular - had been sent to deal with political dissenters like these people probably were.

"You two are both very lucky," a man's voice sounded from the shadows. "I think those troops were probably sent to look for you."

Rorschach leaped to his feet as quickly as his wounds allowed as the newcomer stepped into view, and Laurie gaped in astonishment..

"Edgar William Jacobi, alias Edgar William Bright, alias Edgar William Vaughn..." Rorschach began.

"Moloch!" Laurie interrupted. "What are you doing here?"

The old man before them responded with a self-conscious shrug.

"One of those black hole things swallowed my apartment. I got caught up in the chaos, same as you two...hey!" he cried, as Rorschach lunged forward and grappled him into an arm lock.

"Now wait just a minute!" The woman who'd come to their aid shouted, sweeping her daughter behind her. The girl continued to watch the proceedings with wide, concerned eyes.

"Hey, I did my time!" Moloch exclaimed, as Rorschach bore down on his arms. "I paid my debt to society. I'm not Moloch anymore!"

"Silk Spectre and I have been framed for terrorism. Implicated on the radio, in the papers. Do you expect us to believe that your presence here is coincidental?" Rorschach scoffed.

"Mr. Jacobi has been here since his brownstone blew. We were neighbors," the woman explained.

"Anarchists," Rorschach sneered through the fabric of his mask. "Anti-establishment rabble. Unpatriotic. Fond of explosions. Perhaps recent events are all too convenient, _hurm_?"

"Goddamnit Rorschach, _think_ a minute," Laurie exclaimed. "The_ establishment _is after us, remember? The same establishment that lets the Comedian rape and murder people at will? We're all in the same boat here."

"We figured they were trying to pin this disaster on the two of you. What I can't figure out is what these explosions really are, or what's causing them," their rescuer said. "If it's a false flag operation, the CREEPs are covering it up really well. Those grunts were just as freaked out as everyone else. That's why they just started shooting when that last one opened up - they got caught up in the panic and cut off from the rest of their unit and their C.O. Some of them even surrendered when we started throwing those flashbangs."

"Sorry, I didn't catch your name -" Laurie asked, as Rorschach reluctantly release Jacobi's arms.

"Gwen," the woman replied.

"What the hell is going on?" Laurie asked. "This has got to be bigger than just Rorschach and me. There's no way that Nixon would be capable of something like this, even if he did want to frame us. Back when all this started, Jon said that something was wrong with time itself. Maybe he's right, and everything's just coming apart."

"Maybe, maybe not. Nixon declared martial law. Tanks started rolling in a while ago," Gwen explained. "There have been other incidents like the one you saw. We think they're trying to keep anyone from leaving the area, to keep it contained," she said. "I don't think these are actual black holes. A singularity that small isn't supposed to be able to last very long. Either that, or it would go right through the planet without anyone noticing at all. I majored in Astronomy," Gwen clarified at Laurie and Jacobi's astonished glances.

The word _Singularity_ gave Laurie a case of the involuntary shudders, for some reason.

"How does one progress from Astronomy to Anarchy?" Rorschach questioned.

"One does a lot of reading on the subject of Nestor Makhno between semesters," Gwen shot back at him.

"I still haven't thanked you for saving our asses back there," Laurie said.

"Language, Laurel. Children are present," Rorschach interjected.

"You're welcome. What do you plan to do now?" Gwen asked.

Laurie blinked, her mind reeling at how quickly things were moving. She had no idea what time it was; only a short while ago, she'd been holed up in Rorschach's apartment of all places. Before that, in Dan's secret warehouse: and before that, in the Comedian's penthouse, after having visited an apparent torture/rape room and finding Rorschach half-dead in the alley.

"We still haven't found Da...Nite Owl," Laurie said, eyes widening as she realized that she'd almost "outed" Dan by his civilian name for the second time since the whole mess had started.

_I'm really going to have to watch that. _

"Beyond that, I have no idea. Do you know the time, by any chance?"

"I was hoping you knew. My watch has stopped," Gwen responded.

"Yeah, that's going around," Laurie remarked.

"Would anyone care for some tea?" Moloch asked.

*************

Later, she closes her eyes again.

_Just resting them, _she tells herself.

She finds herself standing right smack in the middle of death.

She knows the street corner very well – the newsstand across the street from the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, near the Gunga Diner, not far from the theatre. She's standing in the middle of thousands of dead roses, blossoms withered and dessicated, vines gray and rotted. A whole universe of dead roses.

And yet - as she examines them, she somehow knows that these are _bodies_. She's looking at hundreds and hundreds of human corpses, and for some reason her mind is seeing _plants_ instead. Everywhere she looks, people are dead.

Something in the street catches her eye. She picks it up. It's a sword, slender and pointed like a thorn.

She follows the trail of destruction in numb, sick horror. The dry tendrils lead her to a central hedge that has somehow grown or fallen over Madison Square Garden, the center bloom fixed open like a massive, dead eye, vines trailing from it like tentacles fixed in rigormortis.

Something moves near its base.

It's Adrian, of all people - Adrian Veidt. Ozymandias. He's holding something that looks like a syringe.

"There had to be a sacrifice," he says; and though his voice is nonchalant, even flippant, his eyes are those of a man who knows that he is irrevocably damned. She screams, and lunges at him -

*************

Laurie woke screaming this time, loudly enough to wake everyone else in the room.


	11. A Horse With No Name

It was amazing how quickly everything could go south.

It was soon clear that the area was effectively closed off to the rest of the city. Armed guards were taking shots at anyone who tried to escape through the "stable" areas.

Somehow, the Makhnovists were keeping things together - but their influence encompassed only a few blocks surrounding the tenement building they'd taken, where Laurie and Rorscach now resided. The Anarchist group had hoarded enough food and water to last a few weeks, and were distributing it amongst the folks lucky enough to make it into American Makhnovschina, as they were now calling it. They even had a sign, which read AMERICAN MAKHNOVSCHINA stenciled in stark black letters on a placard set atop the barricade of barbed wire, burnt-out cars and other debris that marked the border between it and the rest of New York City. However, some wag had spray-painted "WELCOME TO ETHER CITY" beneath it.

The second name was starting to stick.

The holes were expanding now, turning the area into a tiny island in a sea of seeming chaos. Blinding color seeped through the blackness, bathing this section of the city in a psychedelic glow. People who tried to go through those areas to other parts of the city didn't make it back. Or, as Laurie surmised, perhaps it was such a harrowing journey that they simply weren't willing to attempt a return trip back through the haze once they'd made it through the first time. One family who eventually reached the safety of the brownstone reported seeing _things_ in the haze.

Selena said they were Angels. Angels fighting in the mist.

Laurie recalled her recent dreams, and shuddered. If they were Angels, why didn't they do something do end this mess? She wondered desperately what had happened to Dan. If he was okay. If the Owlship had been swallowed by one of those black hole things. Those who had radios were leaving them on. Occasionally, one or more would pick up a stray signal. It sounded like everywhere else was as bad off as their little corner of the city, or was getting there fast.

She and Rorschach clashed with the guards a few times since they'd found themselves stranded along with the Makhnovists and civilians. Laurie was still recovering from the fight with her father, but bedamned if she was going to let jackbooted creeps shoot people who were simply trying to run for their lives from the quickly-spreading calamity.

Gwen's husband Jeff resplinted her arm, after declaring that the bones had all been properly set. She went around with her trenchcoat buttoned up, the arm bound up and bundled against her chest beneath it. She still wouldn't be able to use it for very much for a while, but it would mend.

Jeff was white. Laurie wondered if this offended Rorschach's right-wing sensibilities. As it turned out, Jeff had worked as a medic in Vietnam before converting to Anarchism. Laurie wondered if he and her father had ever met.

Laurie and Rorschach found themselves faced with awkward questions as more and more refugees poured in. Word was getting around that they were helping people escape to the safety of the stable zone, but she was well known as one of the only "out" masked adventurers, and Rorshach was widely known to be crazy at the best of times. There had been a few incidents with newcomers who'd freaked out at the sight of them until they were set straight. Somehow, some of the Makhnovists had found the time to embark upon their own propaganda campaign within the stable zone, refuting the official Nixon party line. Despite this, people were still referring to her as the Dark Spectre within earshot.

That was what she kept hearing - _"Rorschach and the Dark Spectre."_

Rorschach was making a token attempt to stop the looting that was currently in progress in the area, but even he seemed to know it was a lost cause. Still, it didn't stop him from trying.

"What are you _thinking_?" Laurie snapped after he'd run a few of the survivors away from the partially-collapsed ruin of a local bodega.

"Theft is still a crime," Rorschach chided her.

"So's rounding up a bunch of innocent people and shooting them like fish in a barrel! If these people don't get enough food and water, they'll all riot. Do you wanna deal with rioting next?"

"Can't compromise, Laurel. Not even in the face of Armageddon," Rorschach told her, before disappearing into the shadows.

Later, some of the Makhnovists came by to gather up what the looters had missed. Laurie thought she saw some of the people that Rorschach chased off in the food line that Gwen and her husband Jeff had established. If Rorschach disapproved, he wasn't making it known here. At least, not for now.

He was there when she got back, and it looked like he'd seen action in the amount of time she'd been helping some of the Makhnovists bring food and bottled water, soda, booze, and just about anything else that was edible back to the refugees. By now they were now spilling over into another brownstone across the street.

A new bloodstain was spreading into the countless faded old ones on the front of his trenchcoat. She bit back her angry remark (like, "_where were you when we were trying to keep people from panicking and losing it and rioting all over the place?_") and remembered that she'd found him covered in blood in an alleyway scarcely a few days ago.

"You should take a rest," she told him, handing him the bottle of coke she carried in her good hand. For a moment she wondered if he would toss it back at her or call it contraband, when he popped the top off, shoved up the edge of his mask, and took a swig. She saw the ginger-colored whiskers, her earlier assessment confirmed.

His mask had been pulled off in the alley. The fact that her father would beat up and victimize a tiny hobo - even if it _was_ Rorschach - knowing who he was, made her want to rip his lungs out through his backside. _As if I ever could. Dammit, God - just give me one clear shot at him next time. I swear this time I won't give him a chance to jump me. I won't miss, I promise._

"Can't. Not until I find a way through. Must find Daniel. If still alive, he must already know of atrocities committed by army of thugs. Together we can end attacks, expose the corruption."

"_That's_ what you were doing?" Laurie asked. "Well damn, did you find any weak spots? We captured some weapons from those goons. Some of the people here are talking about a counterattack. If they do it, I'm going along."

"No! Arm broken. Stupid," Rorschach objected.

"You're one to talk!" Laurie snapped, indicating blood on his coat. "You're the one who keeps going on about how none of us should have quit. Well, here I am, goddammit. I'm with you on finding Dan, but we need to see what's happened to Jon and Adrian if we get through. Adrian's got connections all over the scientific community. He's got to know something about what's causing all this."

"Considered that possibility." He pulled his mask back down. "This is no accident. It's an attack. Thought Soviets might be behind it, might have discovered a weapon that could thwart Dr. Manhattan. Doesn't explain betrayal by Comedian, soldiers firing guns on civilians. Possible that Veidt and Dr. Manhattan might even be in on the scheme. Who else could have caused this kind of destruction?"

"You've got to be kidding! What would Veidt have to gain from destroying half of New York?" Laurie retorted. "He's always helping people. And Jon was too freaked out the last time I saw him. Trust me, he didn't see any of this coming at all."

"Who better to fool the indestructible man than the smartest man in the world?" Rorschach responded.

"Look, I don't blame you for being paranoid. The thing now is to find a way out. I hope we're still in a position to give who or what is causing this shit a piece of our minds once we do find out what the hell is going on."

...

It went badly.

It went badly, and ended up with Laurie pressing her good hand against the gaping holes in a black-clad kid's chest where he'd fallen, in a vain attempt to stop the blood.

She dimly recalled someone grabbing her, dragging her away from the body, when there was an explosion of pain at the right side of her face.

When she came to, she was staring up at Rorschach out of her left eye. She reached up to the right side of her face and felt bandages. The pain was incredible.

"Bullet grazed your right temple," Rorschach told her. "Lucky to still have your eye."

"Did anyone get through?" Laurie asked.

"Three dead. Others ran. Left the bodies. No choice."

"_Goddammit_!" Laurie sobbed.

The radio had a signal again. Laurie could hear the faint melody over the bustle of frantic activity in the makeshift hospital. It sounded like Leonard Cohen, but it was nothing that she recognized.

"_Would someone shut that fucking thing off?"_ she wailed.

...

She was moving. A hot gust of wind buffeted her face. Laurie opened her eyes, her brain struggling to assimilate the sights that surrounded her.

She was in a desert, on a horse, looking like something from a Pale Horse album cover. She was wearing armor – fucking armor! - forged from a strange dark red metal, covered with intricate designs that vaguely reminded her of ocean life – coral, starfish, that sort of thing. She was glad that it seemed to be serious armor, and not some tawdry chainmail equivalent of lingerie. No, this armor consisted of interlocking plates that covered her from neck to boots, and the truly weird thing was that it didn't feel heavy at all.

_This is a dream_, she told herself.

Her arm seemed perfectly okay, and she could see out of both eyes, which confirmed for her that this had to be a dream. But when she saw her reflection for a split-second in an oasis that they passed, she did a double-take. The glimpse she caught of her face in the clear blue water looked like someone had splashed the area around her right eye with a streak of red paint.

They were going very fast.

The words came to her almost without her knowing it.

"_I've been through the desert on a horse with no name._

_It felt good to get out of the rain._

_In the desert, you can remember your name_

_'cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain -"_

She wasn't aware that she was actually singing the lyrics aloud until the wind kicked up, scattering a shower of sand around her. Some of it got in her mouth, and she was still gagging it out when she noticed the city in the distance, and the army that surrounded it.

The group that split off from the main force and were racing towards her at top speed did not look friendly in the least. She saw that some of them had bows, and were aiming arrows at her. She spat out a final gob of sand and sang louder, trying to keep her face down. The chorus was all she remembered, but it seemed to do well enough. The sand pulled up around her like a sheet and burst outward, driving the attackers away from her and sending their arrows wildly off target. She realized that it didn't get in her face when she _aimed_ it, though the area it protected was very small – just her and the horse, really.

It was a dream, so it made sense.

She could hear the people on the walls cheering. She kept the dust devil going long enough to get to the city gates, when she let it collapse around her.

The guys inside the walls seemed to be expecting her. She saw the gates open, and several large armored figures bearing all kinds of antiquated weaponry – swords, axes, maces, you name it - spilled out to cover her entry. They had the gates closed as soon as she was inside.

The largest figure shoved up the visor of his helm as soon as her horse skidded to a stop. He was a large, burly, blonde-bearded man, and he reminded Laurie of a viking.

"Do you bring word from Elric and Moonglum, Madam?" he asked, as another man took the reins of her horse.

"They were held up," she said, somehow suddenly _knowing_ that this was what she'd braved the desert and the army to tell these people. "They were delayed." It apparently wasn't what they wanted to hear. She saw the big Viking's shoulders fall.

There was another guy walking towards them – also blonde, a shade so pale that it looked bleached - but with darker skin and features like an Arab. He was also dressed in red, a bright, scarlet red, and there was a red feather in his helmet. He was carrying a bow.

"Welcome to Tanelorn, madam. I am Rakhir, called the Red Archer, and this is Brut of Lashmar," the archer said, gesturing towards the Viking. "Your tidings are unfortunate. We had hoped that Elric and Moonglum were returning with aid. Your sword and your sorcery are welcome here, Madam -"

_I have a sword?_ Laurie wondered. She glanced back at the horse, which was being led away to a stable behind them, and noticed it was still strapped to the saddle._ Oh. Duh. _She realized the Rakhir was waiting for her her to tell them her name.

"Lorel-Jaeyn Y'u'spechik'k" she said. Something was _wrong_ about the way her name came out – she said it the way she always did, but there were more syllables this time for some reason.

"I thought there was a Melnibonean cast to your features, if I may say so milady. Are you a kinswoman of Elric's, perhaps?" Brut asked. They were moving up a spiral staircase in a tower or a turret or whatever it was called, up to the top of the city walls. A sizable force was gathered there – but Laurie could see that it would not be nearly enough to defeat the massive army that stood outside the city walls.

And again, she knew – if this city were to fall, it would be _the end._ Not just the end of the people living here, but the end of _everything, everywhere._

As she took in the sight of the invading army, she finally saw it – their standard. Her brain literally refused to accept the features engraved on the golden idol which stood mounted on a huge litter, borne by hundreds of slaves. Beneath it, also graven in gold, were the words:

"LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR."

"Oh _fuck_," she exclaimed.


	12. Song Of The Swords

Author's Note: We are getting to the part that I've procrastinated on for almost two years. As far as I've gotten into this, it turns out that I'm terrified of writing Michael Moorcock's characters, of getting them wrong. Hence the long delays between updates.

When I first started writing this, I wasn't really thinking about it - I just sort of held my breath and went with it. The closer I got to this part, the more and more I thought about it, the more intimidated I felt.

Turns out the best way to deal with this is how I did in the beginning - by just holding my breath and going with it. So here I go.

….

She doesn't remember when it happened. Some point after the barricades went up, but before things got really complicated.

She puts it up to how...chaotic everything was getting at the time.

She and Moloch - goddamned Moloch, of all people - are just sitting in the makeshift pantry, sorting through scavenged canned goods when he speaks up out of nowhere.

"Heard you saw Count Zodiac the night everything started to go south," he says conversationally.

"Yeah. He was really something," Laurie answers. Thinking about that night, and the nightmare that had been steadily unfolding ever since, still makes her head hurt – which is why she tries to lose herself in busy work like this, or by going out on patrol. She is the only one so far who has dared to get close to the gaps in the asphalt, to the place where the iridescent haze leaked in from Wherever.

She knows Rorschach follows her, for all that he sneers that she shouldn't be patrolling alone after five years of _retirement_, with her arm still broken. She snaps back that her legs aren't broken, and goes anyway.

[She knows he's aware that one day, she may get too close, and never come back -]

"It's really his son, you know. They have sort of a legacy going, like you and your mom. I saw his father, back in the day," Moloch heaves a huge sigh.

Laurie wonders if she is in for another story about how masked adventurers in his day had to adventure through twenty feet of snow, and liked it, before he goes on;

"I read the penny dreadfuls, as a kid. I remember it all like I was actually there - Sporting Club Square, Smith's Kitchen, the works. Count Zodiac was a master magician and a criminal mastermind, the ultimate gentleman thief. Only Sir Sexton Blake could ever outsmart him. And they were related. Cousins, if I remember correctly. That part's important. Editors went through when they reprinted all the old stories, changed Sir Sexton's name to Seaton Begg for some reason." He shrugs. "No matter. I imagine Count Zodiac could give Adrian Veidt a run for his money, even on his worst day."

"He was criminal? But Rorschach said Count Zodiac was a hero. He fought the Nazis," Laurie interjects.

"Anyone who had a lick of sense fought the Nazis." Moloch tells her. He leans closer, says conspiratorially,

"Count Zodiac was the one who made me want to be a supervillain when I grew up."

He fishes something out of his pocket and looks at it; an ancient tin pin, marked with a symbol like a compass rose, or an eight-spoked wheel.

"I got this when I was a kid. Count Zodiac's coat of arms. Don't know why I grabbed this when Gwen and the others were pulling me out of the rubble after my place went down. It's one of the few things I have left from the old days. I used to keep it on me all the time. But come to think of it, it's never really gotten me anywhere I wanted to go." He looks up at her, says:

"I want you to have it."

"Oh Mol...Mr. Jacobi, I can't take your pin," Laurie objects, even as he's putting it in her hands.

And right away, something changes. She can feel it, as she pins it to the lapel of her coat. Rorschach sees it later, and she can tell he wants to say something, so she heads him off at the pass before he can.

"Before you ask, this is goddamn Count Zodiac's coat of arms. I think Moloch probably got it out of a cereal box or something when he was ten. He gave it to me."

"Accepting gifts from Moloch -"

"Look, if it bothers you so much, just think of it as having come straight from the hand of Count Zodiac to me. Moloch was just holding on to in the meantime," she quips, lighting a cigarette. " I'll catch you later, if I don't fall through the cracks. If I do and I make it out, I'll try to remember to pick up some donuts on my way back."

He follows her, just to make sure she does not fall through the cracks.

….

"You bear the arms of Chaos, madam," Brut of Lashmar remarked, as she followed him to the city's forum.

"What, this?" she asked. The black-and-white pin was stuck through the shoulder of her tabard, dull and faded against the blood red of the fabric.

"Have you sworn allegiance to the gods of Chaos? Many here have served them in the past, and are now forsworn. It is true that Chaos holds no love for Tanelorn, yet Elric has aided us many times."

"Tanelorn's bigger than Law or Chaos. Probably why Adrian wants to sack it," Laurie says. "Shit...why _Adrian_? This has to be some sort of trick. He was always _good_." She takes a drag off the pipe that she found in the house she was given soon after she made it into the city.

It didn't make any sense, so it all had to be a dream. That's what she kept telling herself. It was all just a dream, she would wake up, and Adrian would still be the shining paragon of all that was Right and Good and True, and not trying to conquer the most important city in the history of everything, ever.

As well as probably being the one who'd fucked everything up, timewise.

She really didn't want to think about it right now.

They were accosted on the way to the forum by one of the younger folks she'd seen here, a kid by the name of Uroch.

"Moonglum fought his way through the blockade. He has gained the city gates!"

Brut broke into a run, with Laurie close behind, even if she didn't know why this was so important.

By the time they got there, she knew. Somehow, she knew – even from the back, she could tell. It was the flame-red hair, and the fact that he was so _short_. She heard from Uroch, as she was taking this all in, that he had slipped through the enemy camp under cover of darkness, nearly decapitating one of the guards with his own shield.

It was too much like something Rorschach would have done.

He turned, and something in her stomach flipped over. The face she'd half-glimpsed in the alley. The grim, intense little hobo carrying his proclamation of doom – a fixture around Bernie's paper stand, around the Gunga Diner where she sometimes took her coffee.

The same guy, the same face – yet different. The way he moved was the same, yet _different_. He was dressed like something out of an Errol Flynn movie. There was a short sword and a sabre at his hip, a spring to his step that she was certain that Rorschach had never affected.

"Hello, milady! Elric sends his regards – and something else." That voice – over the past week or so of hanging out with Rorschach, Laurie had caught herself wondering how his voice would have sounded without the filter of years of madness and the grit of New York's streets.

Now she knows.

"It'd better be something that can beat back those legions, or we might as well call it a day," Laurie said.

"I do not think you will thank me, once you have seen it," Moonglum said, pulling down the long, slender bundle that was slung across his back. "He sent word that you alone are to bear it. And he sends with it his condolences, and his regrets."

It was a sword. A black sword with red runes running down the length of the blade.

"Stormbringer!" Rackhir exclaimed. "But how could Elric part with his sword? It is well known that man and blade cannot be separated!"

"Mournblade," Moonglum corrected. "Stormbringer's twin, retrieved by the aid of sorcery. It seems you are fated to wield it, milady - if just for a while."

"_I don't want this_," Laurie blurted, the words bypassing the rational part of her brain that wanted to know why this was such a big deal. After all, it was only a sword, and this was only a dream.

….

She touches the hilt - hand drawn inexorably towards the metal, despite herself - and once again, something changes.

Like the world ends, and she's watching all of creation reset itself, growing from the primordial chaos back towards this very moment, like she's caught in an infinite loop. She is destroyed and recreated all in the space of a moment. And after it's all over, after the heat death of this universe and the emergence of the next, events will conspire to bring her and the sword back together at this exact point once again. On and on, _ad infinitum._

"I'm sorry," Moonglum tells her. "There is no other way."


End file.
